Pressure on emergency department and budget

As the region’s emergency departments are stretched by summer demand, the health board budget has dipped into the red.

At the end of December, the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board’s finances were $1.35 million behind what it had planned for the year to date.

The six-monthly financial result was a deficit of $367,000 against a planned surplus of $989,000.

In a report to the board, chief executive Peter Bramley said the health system was under ‘‘significant financial pressure’’.

‘‘This certainly reflects the ageing demographic, increasing presentations to emergency departments and the rising complexity of admissions,’’ it read.

‘‘Places like our ICU are busier than ever. The number of cancer procedures being operated on is rising. The cost of specialist pharmaceuticals is increasing rapidly.’’

Bramley said the emergency departments had been ‘‘super busy’’ as visitors poured into the region. On January 8 for example there had been 48 presentations to ED between 2.45pm and 11pm.

Few of those could be redirected to primary care and staff had to work overtime to cope.

NMDHB general manager finance and performance Eric Sinclair told a board meeting this week the deficit was concerning.

‘‘The key challenge for all of us is to get that turned around and get ourselves back into a surplus position because it takes a lot more pressure off.’’

In a report, Sinclair said the key areas of budget pressure were workforce costs, pharmaceutical costs, patient transfers by road and ambulance, outsourced radiology costs and clinical supplies.

He said there were a number of strategies and initiatives in place to address the shortfall.

‘‘I think we can still turn the ship around and come back, whether we can come back and deliver to the plan will be the challenge over what is effectively now five months.’’