Arvin and Abegail Chua at home in Stokes Valley with their youngest child, 22-month-old Sedric, who is waiting for his brother to return to his bed. Photo / Dave Lintott
Arvin and Abegail Chua at home in Stokes Valley with their youngest child, 22-month-old Sedric, who is waiting for his brother to return to his bed. Photo / Dave Lintott
EDITORIAL
The headlines have been increasing in frequency and in damnation over waiting times at emergency departments.
Waikato Emergency doctor John Bonning tried to blow the whistle in March, saying people were waiting for treatment in hospital corridors for far too long. He said Covid was a complication but thesituation was “a manifestation of an underfunded health system”.
Then in July this year, it was revealed ED wait times were the worst in a decade as more than one in five people experienced a treatment delay of at least six hours. The drums had been beating for far longer with frontline staff reporting a crisis. Middlemore Hospital hit record-level delays in treating more than 420 patients a night for two successive nights in June.
Health Minister Andrew Little, when presented with the Middlemore situation, said hospitals were under pressure “as they were every winter” but were coping. Presented with more concerns from Bonning, Little said he had not seen any data showing hospitals were reaching record levels of delays and patient presentations.
The reality, as we now know, is entirely different.
On June 15, an otherwise “healthy” 50-year-old woman presented to Middlemore Hospital ED with a severe headache and was told there would be an eight-hour wait to be seen. In frustration, she left but returned three hours later, presenting with a brain bleed that killed her.
At the beginning of this month, Arvin Chua and his wife Abegail Chua took their 4-year-old son Neil Sebastian “Sebby” Chua to Wellington Regional Hospital where he spent six hours waiting for a paediatric doctor before his condition deteriorated and he died in the resuscitation room, eight hours after arriving.
Wellington couple Arvin and Abegail Chua lost their 'healthy' son, Sebby. Photo / Dave Lintott
On Monday last week, a woman arrived at the Christchurch Hospital ED at 5.11pm and waited three hours for her initial assessment. Giving up, she left and got to her car before she collapsed, and was taken back inside by her daughter. She was seen immediately and transferred to the intensive care unit, where she died the following morning.
The pandemic depleted our health system, just as every modeller and epidemiologist warned incessantly. Staff are exhausted, triage and admission rooms were redeployed, and unvaccinated workers opted out rather than comply with mandates. Waiting times at general practices are also blowing out. None of these things can be remediated in the short term by the rebranded Te Whatu Ora.
Bonning has, tragically, been proven more correct than the health minister and our former director general of health.
In cases of sudden death, time will be needed for the Coroner to ascertain causal factors and whether improvements should be made. But there’s a cruel twist. Coronial services have been struggling to cope with demand since 2014. In 2020/21, coroners closed 3321 cases, taking an average of 479 days to close a case, an increase of 97 days from the year prior.
This means any recommendations for change from official lines are likely to take more than a year.
The minister should not wait that long. The time for waiting is up.
