By Rowan Quinn of RNZ
Auckland's North Shore Hospital has an entire ward of people stuck in hospital with no medical reason to be there.
The 20-bed ward was created in May this year for patients who were effectively medically discharged but did not have anywhere to go for lower level care, such as an aged care facility.
RNZ understands they were not under the direct care of doctors, but were looked after by nurses and allied health staff such as physiotherapists and social workers.
Some were there for weeks.
Health NZ's Waitematā operations director Brad Healey said started the dedicated ward to help boost capacity in the busy winter period.
It had helped improve the flow of patients because people were spending less time in emergency departments and were getting the care they needed sooner, he said.
Deborah Powell heads the APEX Union, which includes allied health workers, said it was not unusual for the patients to be in the ward for two or three weeks, but sometimes it was longer.
It was not ideal but it was a good, practical decision to have them in one place rather than dotted around the hospital, she said.
"It would be better to have them in the community but we just don't have that capacity out there at the moment."
Sarah Dalton, head of the senior doctor's union the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said it was not good for people to be in hospital when they did not need to be.
"You're much better off to be in the community where you can be dressed and walking around and doing your daily things and doing exercise and getting rehab and all of those good things."
Having people stuck in hospital also helped create longer surgical waiting lists, she said.
"One of the biggest contributors to cancellations of elective surgeries in hospitals is that there aren't enough staffed beds to put the patients in after their surgery."
"It has a domino effect back through the hospital in terms of other people's ability to access care."
The government needed to do more to fund public aged residential care and also support services that allowed people to go back to their own homes, rather than the "last resort" of having to stay in hospital, Dalton believed.
Healey said each patient in the ward had a "responsible medical clinician" and could access medical care if their condition changed and a further medical assessment was needed.
"The patients have complex discharge pathways, requiring specialist nursing and allied health workforces."
Those teams worked closely with the patients and their whānau to get the discharge support they needed, he said.
