A cancer patient spent days in Palmerston North Hospital waiting for a procedure that should have taken an hour.
Craig Gutry, who has terminal bowel cancer, thought he was popping in to the emergency department to have a lump in his throat drained that was preventing him from eating.
That was on Sunday and he was only just released on Wednesday night.
The Cancer Society - among others - were urging them to get up to speed as quickly as possible to stop backlogs.
The Gutry family had also experienced the tough side of lockdown rules, when Craig spent 18 days in hospital earlier this month, most of them with no visitors.