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Hospitals have become crammed since the onset of winter, and a leading doctor warns that the crush could be killing patients forced to wait on trolleys in emergency department corridors.
Auckland's three district health boards each reported high hospital congestion levels last night as they coped with the first peak of winter bringing an influx of patients with heart disease and respiratory illnesses.
North Shore Hospital was at 100 per cent occupancy yesterday, while Middlemore was hovering just below completely full.
Auckland City Hospital was at 97 per cent, a slight respite. Waitakere had dropped to 78 per cent but was expecting to be back to at least 95 per cent by midnight.
Auckland City Hospital is frequently on "red alert" during winter, and was for half of last week.
Its red alerts are triggered by the influx of patients exceeding high occupancy thresholds, by high levels of staff absences or by having more than 20 emergency patients awaiting admission to a ward.
The computer and text alert to senior staff is aimed at fixing the problem quickly, for instance by opening extra beds.
"At the moment we seem to be going in and out of red alert on a daily basis," said the general manager of operations, Ngaire Buchanan.
The Weekend Herald has reported long delays at North Shore's emergency department this winter, including one woman who waited more than 22 hours on a hospital trolley for admission to a ward - although such waits are not uncommon in winter at some other hospitals.
North Shore spokeswoman Bryony Hilless said yesterday that of 70 patients in its emergency department, 23 were waiting for admission to a ward.
Bed-blocking, or emergency department "gridlock", arises when a hospital is so congested that patients cannot be admitted to wards until some are discharged or more beds are opened, often requiring additional nurses to be hired. Don Valk, a duty manager at Middlemore, said it had opened extra beds for winter but was having trouble staffing them.
The clinical director of Auckland City Hospital's adult emergency department, Dr Tim Parke, said waits of more than 24 hours for admission were common during red alerts, but his hospital no longer allowed overcrowding to the point of putting patients on trolleys in ED corridors.
"It may affect their chances of survival," he says in an article published in today's Herald.
Overcrowding led to errors, delays and inadequate monitoring.
