KEY POINTS:
North Shore patients are left lying on trolleys in corridors because they're too old and too rich, it has been claimed.
Dr Dwayne Crombie, North Shore's former chief executive who joined private company Guardian Healthcare six months ago, says patients there lose out because they are too affluent.
The DHB's patients are among the healthiest and wealthiest - on average - in the country. And because many of them do not end up at the public hospital until they are elderly, they tend to be doubly disadvantaged.
Dr Crombie said that since 2003, population-based funding had been weighted with an "unmet needs" adjuster that was explicitly socio-economic - "based on the number of people you have in your lowest quintile".
This funding formula has driven Waitemata to become the lowest-funded DHB in the country, getting 14.1 per cent less per person on average. This means it is roughly $90 million to $100 million worse off than most other DHBs on a straight per-head basis.
Waitemata's crisis has been exacerbated by years of under-funding via a population-based formula based on old Census figures. Those figures fail to reflect successive waves of migration which have made Waitemata one of the country's fastest-growing DHBs.
Its latest performance figures, obtained by Oppposition health spokesman Tony Ryall, show Waitemata going backwards. It scores worst in the country for triage one care (the most urgent) at 77 per cent of cases, well behind the Auckland and Counties Manukau DHBs on 100 per cent.
Mr Ryall said: "The Government's own information shows Waitemata has the most under-pressure emergency department in the country."
Now, as winter rolls around and the hospital comes under more pressure, patients can expect long waits on trolleys in the emergency department.
Bed occupancy in Waitemata's Tower Block wards are already running at near 100 per cent and the hospital is short of 60 full-time nurses.
North Shore is also plagued by strikes, go-slows and doctor shortages, as are other Auckland hospitals.
Last week, part-time house doctor Aimee England was left on her own to care for 18 patients for a full shift. She considered the workload "incredibly unsafe and incredibly stressful". And she was too busy to discharge those ready to go home.
General manager Rachael Haggerty said long waits on trolleys in emergency was the reality at North Shore. "We manage the workload by people waiting in our Emergency Care Centre. We know there is a problem, it's not ideal by any means."
