There’s no sign yet the coalition Government plans to restore funding for what was east Auckland’s only overnight medical service.
The 11pm-7am service provided by East Care Accident and Medical in Botany ceased in December, 2020.
East Care Group chief executive Gordon Armstrong said at the time it was a move “taken with enormous regret”.
“We have found ourselves increasingly caught between a rock and a hard place, to the point where we can no longer provide a safe and high-quality overnight operation.”
The 11pm-7am service in Botany Road operated for more than 20 years.
Counties Manukau District Health Board (CMDHB) funded it from 2014-2018 with East Care meeting the cost from then until it was closed.
In early 2021 Botany MP Christopher Luxon and Pakuranga MP Simeon Brown, who were both then in Opposition, launched a petition calling for the overnight service to be reinstated.
Their petition was signed by more than 10,000 people.
Luxon and Brown also staged a public meeting on the issue in March, 2021, with CMDHB Margie Apa and chairperson Mark Gosche and met with Apa and her executive leadership team as well as the DHB’s board to discuss the issue.
“We are committed to continuing the work to bring back this service and to advocate for more health services to be delivered locally in our area,” Brown said at the time.
Luxon said at the time that east Auckland is the only part of the city without local afterhours or 24/7 care.
“People are travelling a long way to Middlemore Hospital and often these people are in quite a lot of pain and discomfort.”
Brown added that people who live in suburbs such as Beachlands and Maraetai will have to travel even further to get to Middlemore Hospital.
“That’s where East Care played an important role, not just for our suburbs but communities further away.”
Six months after being elected to Government and Luxon becoming Prime Minister, there’s no sign that East Care’s overnight service will be reopening any time soon.
The Times recently asked him if the Government will be able to restore its funding.
“It’s incredibly complex and it’s one of the things I’ve called nine better public service targets,” Luxon says.
“One of them is we want to have 95 per cent of New Zealanders able to get in and out of an emergency department within six hours.
“Today it’s something like over 35 per cent of New Zealanders have to wait more than six hours to get treatment in an emergency department. That’s not good enough.
“We’ve set these big health targets around emergency departments, immunisation rates for under two-year-olds, access to specialist appointments and elective surgeries, and faster treatment for cancer as the five big goals we want the health system focused on.
“It will take time, but we know a lot of it is about workforce and making sure we’ve got the right number of nurses and doctors.”
Luxon says the Government wants to get money out of the bureaucracy in Wellington to frontline services “and make sure everyone’s focused on delivering those goals”.
“So it’s part of that conversation. It’s not just East Care here in east Auckland, it’s actually across the whole of the country.
“Is there a different and better way to be investing in primary care to avoid people ending up in emergency departments?
“So as part of that conversation that may well be one of the things we think about.”
