Patients forced to travel for hospital treatments

Katie Todd, RNZ Otago/Southland reporter

Decades of dramatically misjudged healthcare demand is forcing thousands to travel beyond Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes for hospital treatment each year, including for half of all births, a health group says.

The Southern Lakes Health Trust, whose steering committee includes Otago and Central Lakes MPs, mayors and clinicians believed a recent shift in approach from Health NZ could result in a new, local, publicly run and privately financed hospital.

The trust wanted public health chiefs to back its plan, acknowledging existing healthcare services were long outstripped by the region's booming growth.

The trust's clinical advisor Dr Jez Leftley said Queenstown's Lakes District Hospital was built in 1988 for 4500 people, so its 12 inpatient beds and 10 emergency department beds were not enough for the nearly 80,000 people living in Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes.

"There's been a recognition amongst clinicians in the area for years the services are severely lacking and we're hugely under-resourced."

More than 3000 Central Otago Lakes patients were admitted to Dunedin and Invercargill hospitals last year because of limited local services, the trust said.

The trust said 49 percent of planned births in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago happened outside of the region, not including urgent transfers.

About 300 people were transferred from Lakes District Hospital to other hospitals by helicopter in 2024 at a cost of $6.3 million, including visitors injured skiing, biking and taking part in Queenstown's adventure tourism offerings, according to figures supplied by Southland MP Joseph Mooney.

Mooney - also on the steering committee - said that could have flow on effects for people in other regions waiting for elective surgeries.

"They get, effectively, bounced off the waiting list because of the urgent needs that are coming in from people who have bad injuries. So, it can mean people end up waiting a lot longer for health services in other parts of the broader southern region."

Privately financed, publicly run - a new proposed model

Earlier this year the Southern Lakes Health Trust devised a plan to try to fix the region's healthcare woes.

The trust wanted Health NZ and the government to consider a new, privately financed, but publicly run "Southern Lakes Hospital".

Health infrastructure specialist Helen Foot said it was an outside-the-box solution to an urgent need.

"It's partly about getting creative in how you use your workforce and using them in ways where we're not stealing off the public sector to then pay more in the private.

"A lot of these private projects are being looked at anyway. People are talking about two potential private hospitals in Wānaka. The whole point of our project is to ensure that those are done in a co-ordinated way that doesn't affect the public system, and actually helps the public system."

One of those hospitals was a $300 million, five level, 70-bed hospital proposed by property investor, Roa.

 

It said last year it would be seeking fast track consent for the build, east of Wānaka.

Leftley said the trust was not talking about a "true" public-private partnership where it would be contracting private services, rather solely hospital infrastructure.

Foot said Health NZ was too busy "in the throes of delivering health services" to investigate the opportunities for partnership.

"It's not really on them to be doing the connecting and bringing parties to the table. So we decided that's work we could help with."

Asked if it would consider a privately owned, publicly-run hospital for the region, Health NZ said it would not make any decisions until the completion of its clinical services planning.

New clinical services plan underway

In July Health NZ announced it would work on a clinical services plan for the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago districts.

Health NZ said it would study the region's current and projected health needs and report back by December.

"This planning will help to determine what future publicly funded clinical services may be required in the area and how they will be delivered across the continuum of care," it said.

Leftley said the plan was a long-awaited step forward because Health NZ had recognised Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago's needs separately to those of wider Otago and Southland.

"We've needed them to be looking at the planning for the 14 years that I've been here, and they've always just been pushing it off, pushing it off, so to have made that step forward now, to actually committing to looking at this region and looking at what healthcare services we need in this region is huge," he said.

Foot said the clinical services plan stopped short of a solution but might help to realise the group's vision.

"Our leadership group will be looking at funding and resourcing the plan so that we can get this, keep the momentum going, get this moving," she said.

Mooney said the discussion seemed to be shifting from "if" there should be a new hospital to "where and when".

'Third World' conditions and long-overlooked growth

Foot said the health struggles of "ordinary New Zealanders" in Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes region had long been overlooked.

"There's often a lot of comparisons around whether there's deprivation here, whether the community are deserving of health services being close to home - and we do have access to health services - but they're at such distance that it's causing real hardship.

"A couple of forums I've been in, clinicians have described the conditions here as 'Third World' in some areas."

She said decision-makers had not acknowledged the rapid population growth of Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago districts, instead relying on whole-of-New Zealand population projections.

"The data being relied on was woefully inadequate, frankly," Foot said.

She noted Health NZ's 10-year health infrastructure plan released in April did not mention any plans for Queenstown Lakes or Central Otago beyond committing to a new rural health hub in the wider "southern" region.

Leftley said waiting a decade before planning a new public hospital could be catastrophic.

"If we look at what the population of the Southern Lakes region would be at that stage - we would just fall over. It would be dangerous. There would definitely be some deaths related to not having the facilities in the region," he said.

Minister open to alternatives

The trust said it was waiting for direct feedback from Health Minister Simeon Brown about the hospital plan and would seek an assurance he would investigate solutions.

In a statement, Brown said ensuring health services kept up with population increases in the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago districts was a priority for him.

"Earlier this year at the NZ infrastructure investment summit, I made clear that the government was open to all funding and financing proposals that will help us catch up on the infrastructure backlog," he said.

"I look forward to receiving Health New Zealand's clinical services plan for the Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago once it's completed and reading through its recommendations."