A nationwide health-care providers' group is calling for an urgent injection of government funds to build more geriatric hospitals and dementia units.
Elderly people in many parts of the country, including as many as 30 in Dunedin, were being squeezed out of appropriate care because of a shortage of beds, Healthcare Providers New Zealand chief executive Martin Taylor said yesterday.
The organisation represents members who provide all levels of care for the elderly, from rest-homes to specialised psychogeriatric hospitals.
Patients waiting to enter privately-provided care were "choking" public hospitals, or being looked after in their homes when they should not be, he said.
The problem was it was not economic for private providers to expand their facilities, as capital costs of up to $150,000 per bed were not funded by health boards or the Government. In the meantime, it was costing health boards $800 a day to have an elderly person in a public hospital, compared with $150 a day to have that person in a privately run facility.
Mr Taylor said it was time for the Government, health boards and providers to come up with a partnership approach to ensure elderly people were appropriately cared for.
"District health boards have not addressed this problem and there is a crisis looming. There will be a chronic shortage by 2011 unless we do something now. What we need is strategic leadership from boards, and we have not seen that yet."
In Otago and Southland, the shortage of beds had been rapidly worsening in recent months.
"Our members are saying there are no hospital or dementia beds available in Dunedin or Invercargill, which is causing considerable stress on the elderly and their families."
The situation was mirrored in many other parts of the country, including Queenstown, Marlborough, the Wairarapa and Northland.
Peter White, director of Mosgiel's Birchleigh geriatric hospital, and until recently a member of the Healthcare Providers' executive, said last night no-one knew for sure how many people were waiting for geriatric hospital beds in the greater Dunedin area but said he had heard it was 30.
The Otago District Health Board has been discussing the shortage of hospital-level beds for months and as recently as two week ago called for a report into what the board's planning and funding team could do to address the problem.
Chairman Richard Thomson said last night he did not agree with Mr Taylor that health boards had shown a lack of leadership.
"It comes down to a lack of money. There is no doubt there is a gap between what it costs to provide a hospital-level bed and what [the health system] is prepared to pay . . . However, we can only increase payments when the government increases payments to us."
In Otago, there was an oversupply of board-funded rest-home level beds, he said, and one option was to fund fewer rest-home beds and more geriatric hospital beds.
