West Coast report

Grey hospital is as safe as any other hospital in New Zealand according to the review released today by the Director-General of Health.

The review provided an external reassessment of an internal report done by West Coast DHB following a number of allegations made by a departing anaesthetist.

The review team, led by Middlemore Intensivist and the Minister's Principal Medical Advisor Dr David Galler, were impressed with the passion, dedication, professionalism and talent of the DHB staff they talked with.

Dr Galler says the West Coast DHB is the country's best funded DHB (per head of population) but has unique challenges from the country's most isolated and rural district it covers.

The external report makes five recommendations. They are:

immediate resolution of the remaining 15 non-urgent referrals, 'lost' due to inadequate data entry into the hospital's outpatient booking system
immediate review of the hospital's new central booking system
credentialling of each hospital department in parallel with their neighbouring DHB departments (defining areas of work able to be safely and competently carried out) and re-credentialling of clinicians
greater collaboration and development of regional services between West Coast DHB and its immediate neighbours
the Ministry will work closely with the DHB on its corrective action plan and monitoring progress.

Dr Galler says the DHB has a number of short term priorities already identified, but critically much more progress needs to be made on having in place longer term regional cooperation to ensure appropriate cover by senior medical staff and progressively less reliance on contracting senior staff on short term contracts.

A considerable amount of work already completed by the Ministry and DHB on service sustainability provides a good foundation for greater regional collaboration but this must be accelerated.