In a statement, Health New Zealand group director operations Capital Coast & Hutt Valley Jamie Duncan said emergency department escalation and scoring systems helped to identify periods of pressure and guide consistent responses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey reflect a highly dynamic environment that can change throughout the day as patient volumes, staffing and bed availability fluctuates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we acknowledge there is still work to do, Wellington Hospital\u2019s \u2018Shorter Stays in ED\u2019 performance is improving, with 2025 year-to-date results around five percentage points higher than 2024, with a clear upward trend since July 2025, increasing from 48.4 per cent in July to 61.0 per cent in December 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wellington Hospital emergency nurse Ryan O\u2019Donnell said staffing shortages at the hospital meant patients were receiving sub-optimal care.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to run between patients left, right and centre and we are trying to look after more patients than we can at that given moment and that\u2019s when sub-optimal care happens, that\u2019s when mistakes can happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donnell added that patients were being left in emergency department corridors.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s Health spokesperson, Dr Ayesha Verrall, said the code red figures represented a 135 per cent overload.<\/p>\n
\u201cCode reds mean staff cannot cope with demand, meaning patients aren\u2019t able to get the care they need when they need it. Patients who don\u2019t stick around are likely to get worse and need more urgent care in the future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Simeon Brown said Wellington Hospital\u2019s emergency department had unacceptable wait times and was among the lowest-performing in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur ED doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers work incredibly hard and are focused on delivering the best possible care for patients, but they need infrastructure that supports them to reduce wait times and improve patient flow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The minister said the Wellington ED redevelopment had been prioritised and fully funded through Budget 2025, with work already under way across the hospital campus.<\/p>\n
He said the Government had also directed Health New Zealand to progress extended hours for urgent and after-hours care in central Wellington, to reduce pressure on the emergency department.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meantime, I have been very clear with Health New Zealand that the current situation at Wellington Hospital\u2019s Emergency Department is not good enough for patients or staff, and I expect to see improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n
The minister pointed to a $20 million funding boost announced in September last year to increase frontline emergency department staffing nationwide over nine months, including additional support for Wellington Hospital.<\/p>\n
-RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a statement, Health New Zealand group director operations Capital Coast & Hutt Valley Jamie Duncan said emergency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[836,13853,5972,26034,15974,42,2241,78,296,11692,43,15406,40,38,41,39,17251,52,2201],"class_list":["post-244117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-836","tag-code","tag-day","tag-department","tag-emergency","tag-headlines","tag-hospital","tag-in","tag-into","tag-nearly","tag-news","tag-red","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-twice","tag-wellington","tag-went"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}