Timaru emergency department turns 147 away

In just wo weeks, Timaru Hospital's emergency department has turned away 147 patients and sent them back to their GP for treatment.

The hospital is on target for reducing annual patient numbers to the emergency department by 25 per cent – 5000 patients.

South Canterbury District Health Board chief executive Chris Fleming said that from November 16, hospital staff had been sending back to their GP patients not deemed in need of emergency department care. In the last two weeks of November, 147 were sent to their GP. The number sent back this month had not yet been calculated.

Labour MP and health spokesperson Ruth Dyson believes essential frontline health services are being cut.

"You can't get much more frontline than the emergency department. The Government promised there would be no cuts to frontline health services but I think Timaru is seeing the knife-edge of cuts to essential services.

"Sure there will be some people that might be going to the emergency department that should be going somewhere else but they are going there because they need help. A lot of people can't afford after-hours care."

Mr Fleming said that since August, patient numbers at the emergency department had been trending down, with the hospital undertaking an advertising campaign advising the public to see their GP for minor health issues.

The move in mid-November to "re-direct" patients coincided with a memorandum of understanding being signed with Timaru GPs who agreed to treat the patients sent to them by the emergency department, in return for the emergency department providing overnight after-hours care, which had been difficult for the GPs to staff.

"Now all patients who arrive at the emergency department are seen first by the triage nurse and the urgency of their problem is assessed by clinical guidelines that have been agreed by primary care and the emergency department," Mr Fleming said.

"If the nurse and or doctor decide that the patients would receive more appropriate care from their GP they are helped to contact their GP or the duty GP on a free phone in the foyer.

"We have also subscribed to a nurse-led telephone assessment line 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is available to everyone in the community. This service can advise and link the patients to the most appropriate care, depending on their circumstances and health concern."

Mr Fleming said there had been little increase in the number of patients attending the emergency department overnight.

- © Fairfax NZ News