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Frustrated senior doctors working for New Zealand's largest health board have spoken out about "unacceptable" conditions that delay operations - including cancer treatment - until patients' illnesses become acute.
In a letter to the Herald, the Waitemata District Health Board's 13-member senior medical advisory committee complain about a lack of planning by the board.
They say the result is a severe shortage of beds and staff, treatment delays and postponed operations at Waitakere and North Shore Hospitals.
Elderly patients are being treated on trolleys in corridors in the emergency departments, and patients face "inordinate delays" because of the shortage of beds, which the committee says will get worse in winter.
"Some senior citizens have spent upwards of 15 to 20 hours on an uncomfortable trolley in a corridor," they say.
"These delays have resulted in the unacceptable clogging up of the emergency care centre. They are due to the lack of beds at North Shore Hospital and Waitakere Hospital."
The doctors say the board is about 62 beds short, and needs another 28 beds next year and 17 the year after that - the equivalent of a new ward every two years.
Non-urgent operations - including some cancer treatments - are being postponed, they say, in many cases until they become urgent.
And the significant shortage of trained nursing staff needs to be addressed quickly.
"The nursing and medical staff are doing the best they can within the constraints placed upon them.
"Unable to turn away patients who arrive in a seriously sick condition, staff are faced with the unenviable task of trying to care for patients on trolleys in the corridor.
"This is a situation which we think is unacceptable in this day and age."
Committee chairman Dr Joe Singh said the doctors decided to speak out because their silence suggested they were happy with the way the situation was being managed.
He said the main problem was a lack of board planning to cope with the North Shore region's huge population growth, even though the growth had been predicted.
Waitemata District Health Board chairwoman Kay McKelvie said she was disappointed that the committee had chosen to speak publicly.
"Management has met them personally and explained to them the priorities of the board," she said.
"We are acutely aware of the problems and we're working as fast as we can to resolve them."
Ms McKelvie said that since last June, the board had added 20 beds and was about to add four high-dependency beds at North Shore.
By June there would be another 20 beds at Waitakere Hospital and 28 at North Shore.
A tower block with 212 beds was due to open at North Shore in 2011.
The Auckland region had grown by 12.5 per cent since 2001 compared with 5.6 per cent for the rest of the country, and "one of the issues is keeping up with the demand pressures".
