Healthcare moves beyond Covid-19

Palmerston North Hospital is rapidly stepping up the provision of planned care delayed during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The hospital is moving toward normality as just one last case of Covid-19 remains active in the Midcentral Health district.

Board chief executive Kathryn Cook said outpatient appointments had resumed, as had elective surgery.

Compared with April last year, 307 fewer elective procedures were carried out than expected during the lockdown.

Cook said it would take ‘‘quite some time’’ to catch up on those numbers. During the lockdown, the number of people through the emergency department dropped to 2133, down from 3719 in April last year, with 745 of those admitted to the wards, compared with 974 the previous April.

Visiting rules had relaxed enough to allow one person from patients’ home bubbles to be with them for at least some of the time they were in hospital.

‘‘That’s a huge relief. A number of people have quite understandably felt really saddened and concerned

that they could not be with loved ones.’’

But at the same time as hospital services were moving to some sort of normality, Cook said it had to maintain readiness to care for Covid-19 patients should the virus re-emerge in the district.

Cook said some people would question why health services had been cut back so hard, after just one Covid-19 patient spent one night in the hospital. But she said in light of the surge of cases other countries had experienced, the hospital had to prepare to cope with many cases, and to ensure staff were trained, safe and able to care for them. ‘‘We needed to ensure we were as ready as we could be.’’

Cook said it would still be a long time until healthcare returned to normal, and some changes brought about by the coronavirus crisis were seen as improvements that would be retained.

The prefab provided by Kynoch Construction at the entrance to the emergency department would remain in place for some time to separate suspected Covid-19 patients fromothers.

Virtual and tele-health consultations were likely to be locked in for many situations. ‘‘Patients have enjoyed not having to get into cars and travel and wait.’’

Some projects around the hospital had been fast-tracked during the lockdown, including improved air flows to reduce infection risks and ramped-up IT capacity.

And behind-the-scenes planning continued for major projects at the hospital.

The business case for a major upgrade of the surgical services area had been submitted to the Government’s Capital Investment Committee and the board was expected to approve the case for the new mental health facility next month.

‘‘A number of people have quite understandably felt really saddened and concerned that they could not be with loved ones.’’

Kathryn Cook

Midcentral Health Board chief executive