A&E to open 24 hours next year

Children will be the first to benefit when Waitakere starts its round-the-clock emergency service. Photo / Herald on Sunday

The reality of round-the-clock emergency care at the local hospital is at last within sight for Waitakere patients, after the release of an official count-down plan.

After cutting hours at the hospital's emergency care centre in January because of staff shortages, the Waitemata District Health Board is today issuing a staged plan for it to be fully 24/7 by the end of next year.

Adopted at a public-excluded meeting last Wednesday, the plan will see the emergency centre return to a closing time of 10pm in January.

This will be extended to 24/7 opening for children by next July, with the extension of these hours to adults "targeted" for December next year.

The emergency centre opens at 8am. It had been closing at 10pm, but last January started closing its doors to walk-in patients at 6.30pm, although those who came by ambulance or were referred by a GP were still accepted until 10pm.

During the closed hours, patients can go to the nearby White Cross accident & medical clinic or North Shore Hospital in Takapuna.

The expansion of Waitakere paediatric services will mean about 3000 children a year from the area will no longer need to go to Starship hospital in Grafton.

The provision of acute adult services by December next year will cover medical and injury patients who walk in, come by ambulance or are referred by a GP. Surgical patients will be stabilised and transferred to North Shore, ambulance patients needing urgent surgery will bypass Waitakere and trauma patients will continue to be taken to Auckland City Hospital.

As part of a decades-old promise to the Waitakere community, the emergency centre was intended to open around-the-clock when it was commissioned in 2005 as part of the hospital's $60 million upgrading, but the DHB has said shortages of money and staff have prevented that.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett slammed the "crisis" of the hospital's restricted hours when she was an Opposition MP before last November's elections.

Health board chairman Lester Levy said the case to have the hospital open 24 hours a day was compelling. "It's simple: 220,000 people live out there."

An extra 15.5 fulltime-equivalent doctors and even more nurses and other health workers will be needed to run the round-the-clock emergency centre and the consequently expanded services.

Recruitment has begun.