“Patients and their families can be assured that they will be seen and anyone who requires hospital level care will receive it.
“The emergency department uses the Emergency Department at A Glance (EDAAG) system, which has four escalations (green-amber-red-black), factoring in patient numbers, acuity, patient waiting time, and resuscitation bed capacity.
“Colour coding systems are blunt tools used in ED, which is a highly dynamic environment, and the status can change back and forth in minutes over the course of a 24-hour period. It is a real time measure.
“The ED may arbitrarily trigger a particular colour status multiple times in one day as demand and pressures change.”
Staff have told RNZ there have been more than 80 arrivals since midnight, including 21 within one hour.
“I have never seen this before,” one said.
This afternoon the ED was at 156% capacity.
The pressure was partly due to the hospital having to pick up the slack left by smaller Northland hospitals, which were also struggling with demand and staff shortages.
Bay of Islands Hospital at Kawakawa has been forced to downgrade services this weekend due to a doctor shortage.
RNZ understands up to nine patients from Bay of Islands were transferred to Whangārei yesterday, and a medical registrar had been asked to take calls for Dargaville patients, too.
Heath Minister Shane Reti has declined to comment.
More to come
- RNZ