Hospital ‘coverup’ in cuts to eldercare

Health officials are accused of a coverup amid revelations they could not say how many people they cut homecare to.

Midcentral District Health Board cannot say how many elderly people it has cut homecare to because of the IT programme it uses.

The controversial cuts attracted widespread criticism when the DHB told 96-year-old Trixie Cottingham it would be cancelling her services late last year.

The vocal public outcry prompted a backdown by Midcentral in Cottingham’s case.

The Manawatu Standard then revealed the plight of two other women who had their homecare cut and were forced to carry on without it.

But Midcentral says it is unable to quantify how many other people it has cut off.

The DHB’S figures show that could be anywhere between 15 and 461.

Labour health spokeswoman Annette King said this smacks of a ‘‘coverup’’.

She questioned how the DHB’S system could be so poor that it could not record the number of people cut.

‘‘You can only assume they are covering up because they made big changes that have impacted on vulnerable older people.’’

King said the DHB’S explanation was ‘‘hogwash’’ and a ‘‘feeble excuse’’.

Midcentral could confirm that 28 people had appealed their cuts.

Of these, four retained their original services, nine, including Cottingham, had partial services reinstated, and the remainder were cut off.

Cottingham said her help was ‘‘absolutely essential’’ to her staying in her home of 68 years.

Cottingham said older people did not want to rock the boat and would just accept if their services were taken from them.

‘‘They don’t want to make a fuss. I just thought [speaking out] was necessary this time.’’

Midcentral strategy, planning and performance general manager Craig Johnston blamed the hospital’s IT system for not being able to reveal the numbers.

‘‘We do not have the tools to extract the data for a group of patients, such as you requested, from the NASC system electronically. To do this, we need to manually review every individual client file.’’

Johnston said they could only say how many people had been receiving homecare in total.

In October 2015, there were 1041 in this group. In February 2017, there were 580.

However, this drop-off included people who had been moved into personal care, those who had moved out of the district or into supported living or retirement villages, or died.

‘‘In all cases where packages of care were reduced, it was based on an assessment of the individual person’s needs and circumstances.’’

‘‘People had the opportunity to ask for a review if they felt it was not right, and a number did so.‘‘

The DHB’S policy was to only provide homecare to people who required personal care too, except in special circumstances.

Over the past five years there had been an increase in people receiving personal care, Johnston said.