Patients left waiting weeks for lifesaving procedures amid bed shortage

A shortage of cardiac beds and staff in Wellington and Christchurch hospitals is leaving patients at risk and waiting weeks for treatment instead of the recommended days - a situation one doctor describes as a "shambles".The shortage also means that cardiac cath labs - used for procedures such as placing stents - are left unused for parts of the day due to a lack of staff.The newly upgraded cath lab in Wellington needs radiologists and physiologists along with nurses to care for patients in the cardiac wards after treatment.In its pre-election manifesto, the Heart and Lung Foundation is calling for better staffing and more cardiac beds to help tackle the country's single biggest killer.Anna Haarkman has been waiting in Palmerston North Hospital for more than two weeks for a pacemaker after being admitted with chest pains.Palmerston North Hospital.RNZ / Jimmy EllinghamShe is needing to go to Wellington Hospital to have the procedure done but they are "snowed under" and has had no update on when it'll be her turn.Haarkman told Nine to Noon there weren't enough beds or surgeons for her to be transferred."Mainly I'm totally bored out of my skull. I'm not ill. I walk the corridors here to keep my legs going, that's about all I can do."Haarkman said she had spoken to doctors about leaving but would need to sign a waiver and would end up having to start the process all over again.She was also told there could be "another situation and that would be the end of me".Dr Andrew Chatfield, the Heart and Lung Foundation's cardiac medical director and a practising cardiologist in Wellington, said Haarkman's situation was unfortunate and not for lack of staff wanting to help - but that there just wasn't enough beds for patients.Chatfield said the shortage of available beds meant they were "missing out" on guidelines for helping people who had suffered a heart attack, for example.He said people should have a procedure or angiogram within 48 hours but he knew of people waiting weeks.The lack of beds meant they continued having influxes of "really acute patients" or "outliers" in their beds who had come from the emergency department and meant they weren't able to bring their specialist cardiac patients in from the regions."It all has a big flow on effect."Chatfield said it wasn't a new problem and while there had been improvements in the past six months, it wasn't enough.There was still parts of the day where the new cath lab - used to perform lifesaving procedures - sat idle because there wasn't anyone to staff it."The team comes in overnight, deals with the life-threatening situation and then we're unable to staff the lab the following day."As well as highly specialised doctors and nurses, Chatfield said the centre also needed cardiac physiologists, medical radiation technologists and sonographers.Without them, they couldn't do the procedures - and he was hearing that they weren't getting enough staff in these positions.Chatfield said there was risk of harm - and death - to patients waiting in local hospitals to be transferred for their procedure.They were in constant communication with regional hospitals and made every attempt to transfer them quicker if there was a sudden change in their health.But he said there needed to be a "shake-up" - and care towards cardiac centres needed to be prioritised.In a statement, Health New Zealand interim group director of operations for Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley, Robert Blaikie, said demand varied and there were times when bed availability and wider hospital capacity affected how quickly patients could be transferred to Wellington for specialist treatment.Additional beds are expected to come online across Wellington Hospital over the coming years, he said."Wellington Hospital has three cardiac catheter laboratories operating 27 weekday sessions. The medical, nursing, cardiac physiology and anaesthetic workforce doing this work is highly specialised and recruitment for additional staff is ongoing."The workforce requirements and funding needed to operate all 30 weekday sessions have been identified and are currently being worked through regionally. Emergency catheter laboratory procedures continue to be provided outside normal working hours, including at weekends."