No money to staff children’s units

CHRISTCHURCH: New services to improve emergency and acute care of children at Christchurch Hospital will not open because there is no money to staff them.

The existing emergency department observation unit will also have to close for the same reason.

The spaces built for the three units in the $500 million Hagley block will remain largely empty when it opens in November.

Senior clinicians said it was ‘‘disappointing’’ and that they and hospital executives were now working out how to mitigate the risks of overcrowding in the emergency department, and of having to channel more patients into hospital inpatient wards.

Canterbury District Health Board chairman Sir John Hansen and Canterbury District Health Board Crown monitor Lester Levy promised last month that services would not be cut under measures to find $60 million of Governmentordered cost savings.

This came amid mass resignations by executives, and vociferous staff protests.

However, weeks earlier, RNZ has learned, the CDHB told senior clinicians there was no money for extra staff for the two new children’s units, nor for the replacement observation unit in the Hagley hospital.

This will most affect medical services to children, the elderly and mental health patients.

The children’s emergency department ‘‘will remain empty’’, acting ED clinical director Mark Gilbert said.

In addition, staff had been told a new children’s highcare unit as part of intensive care faced the same fate.

‘‘We’ve tried . . . really hard to get the funding, but owing to the financial issues in the DHB at the moment, we haven’t been successful,’’ Dr Gilbert said.

‘‘So what we’re doing is we’re working really hard to try and lessen the impact of the care on the children.

‘‘They’ll still get seen . . . but there’s no doubt that a paediatricfriendly and specific environment is considered international practice, and it’s certainly what we were aiming for.’’

The space was meant to be shared by ED and paediatrics — which will still run an admitting unit there as planned — with overlapping care.

Instead, children will carry on being seen alongside adults, as happens now.

The other part of the new Hagley hospital that will remain empty is the emergency department observation unit (EO).

The existing unit in an old block will close, without being replaced at Hagley despite a new, expensive space having been built for it.

‘‘We can’t staff it at the moment, so we can’t open it,’’ Dr Gilbert said.

He had needed 15 staff, including 12 nurses, to open both the EO and children’s ED, but the CDHB told him in July there was no money.

The Government and Health Ministry have sung Hagley’s praises, and shown off its 3000 rooms to media, despite it being 28 months late opening and tens of millions of dollars over budget.

In midAugust, chairman Sir John told staff: ‘‘I am also delighted to report that the migration into Hagley is close at hand, headed by Mary Gordon.

‘‘Although significantly delayed we will be moving into the newest and best hospital building in New Zealand.’’

A few days later, Ms Gordon quit as executive director of nursing.

Clinicians are in the middle of planning how to shift into Hagley, a huge undertaking, complicated by the exodus of seven of the 11 top CDHB executives, though some are waiting until the migration until they leave for good.

Not chief executive David Meates, though.

He is being farewelled by staff this week, and in a final message to them laid the blame for the CDHB’s $180 million deficit squarely on the Government.

‘‘If Hagley, the acute services building, had been delivered on time in 2018, we would be in a breakeven position now,’’ he wrote.

The delays in the Hagley project, which was run by the Health Ministry, had cost the CDHB $60 millionplus a year, for the likes of buying surgery in private hospitals, Mr Meates said.

Health Ministry funding on a population basis for Canterbury had dropped, and the ministry’s cash funding as the CDHB rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake worked out to a net $23 million once CDHB paybacks were factored in, he said.

Stuff has reported the governmentappointed Crown monitor, or supervisor, at the health board, Dr Levy, claimed more than half of the board’s deficit was due to operational inefficiencies.

This enraged some staff.

RNZ understands directorgeneral of health Ashley Bloomfield said in meetings with CDHB staff, when he was sent to Christchurch by Health Minister Chris Hipkins for damage control last week, that he will not let Dr Levy talk to media again.

Dr Bloomfield refused to comment, his spokesman saying it was a private conversation.

Former head of the senior doctors’ union Ian Powell said the Hagley delays and Government knockback to the hospital’s $450 million rebuild plan just a few months ago ‘‘make a mockery’’ of claims that operational inefficiencies have played a key part in the deficit. — RNZ

❛ We’ve tried . . . really hard to get the funding, but owing to the financial issues in the DHB at the moment, we haven’t been

successful