Critical Condition Of Emergency Departments Harming Whole Health System

More people are showing up in our hospital emergency departments than ever, according to a new report released today by Toi Mata Hauora - Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. Anatomy of a Health Crisis shows that since 2014 ED presentations are up 22.5 per cent, compared to population growth over the same period of only 16 per cent.

When patients arrive in the ED their condition is also more serious - the proportion of patients presenting with immediately or potentially life-threatening conditions has risen from half to two-thirds.

"Acute services are overloaded," ASMS Policy and Research Director Harriet Wild says, "and treating that acute need is crowding out planned care. And all that pressure is overlaid by widespread staffing shortages across all services and professions."

Adjusted for complexity, acute inpatient discharges from our public hospital are up 28 per cent since 2014, and non-acute inpatient discharges have decreased by 3 per cent.

Driving the increases in serious acute admissions is New Zealand’s growing unmet health need - 34.3 per cent of New Zealanders have unmet health need due to wait times, cost or distances to travel.

In contrast, in Europe self-reported unmet need for primary health care ranges from less than 1 per cent of adults in the Netherlands and Germany to 12.9 per cent in Estonia.

"The new coalition Government has accepted the term ‘crisis’ as a descriptor for our public health system," Wild says, "this report pinpoints where they need to starting taking action to tackle that crisis and build our capacity - and the key to that capacity is workforce."

ASMS surveys in 2023 found an average shortfall in senior medical officers, across all departments of 22 per cent.

Anatomy of a Health Crisis is the follow-up to ASMS’ 2019 report Hospitals on the Edge .

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