Plans for swine-flu clinics face shake-up

Plans for community clinics to assess swine flu patients in Auckland are being rewritten after some health centres pulled out over funding fears.

Health authorities say normal primary care is coping with the pandemic so they have not yet needed to open any community-based assessment centres.

The original plan was for 12 in the region, mainly at accident and medical clinics - four in Auckland City, five in Waitemata health district and three in Counties Manukau.

But a Counties DHB email, obtained by the Herald, says: "Many of the [centres] set up as part of previous pandemic planning have cancelled their agreement to be involved".

The email, by primary care director Dr Allan Moffitt, says this was because the costs had not been underwritten.

It also indicates people with flu symptoms who go to Middlemore Hospital's emergency care centre will soon be diverted into a portable building to be opened outside. This is to reduce the risk of flu patients infecting other patients or hospital staff.

Community-based assessment centres were initially planned as places for patients to go for flu assessment and be supplied anti-viral medication, but Tamiflu and Relenza are now generally being reserved for patients considered at greater risk of complications.

The first centre was opened in Christchurch last month, but they have not been considered necessary yet in Auckland.

This is despite a Herald report yesterday that White Cross accident and medical clinics are nearing the point of not being able to cope, because they have been inundated with patients with flu-like illness and around 10 per cent of their staff are off sick.

Dr Moffitt said last night that he would consult primary care leaders next week over proposals to change to a different kind of assessment centre - one led by nurses who would triage patients, sending them home with advice, or to a GP or hospital if their condition was more serious.

Dr Moffitt said the new model was needed because the swine flu pandemic was currently milder than the avian influenza in 2006 on which New Zealand's pandemic plans were based.

Some clinics that had planned to be assessment centres were concerned that if they started that role now and saw only flu patients, there would be too few and their costs would not be covered, Dr Moffitt said.

The health boards have asked that, to avoid spreading swine flu, children under 5 and anyone who is sick not come to visit patients in hospital.