{"id":588649,"date":"2026-09-03T06:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/588649\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T06:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:26:08","slug":"middlemore-hospital-swamped-in-appalling-late-night-surge-of-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/588649\/","title":{"rendered":"Middlemore Hospital swamped in ‘appalling’ late-night surge of patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

An emergency department (ED) doctor at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital says there were more than 100 people waiting to be seen late on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

They told RNZ it was an “appalling” situation for all involved.<\/p>\n

They said Middlemore hit 103 patients waiting in queue at 11.15pm, with seven doctors rostered overnight.<\/p>\n

They said these patients were in addition to those already under treatment and waiting for beds.<\/p>\n

Last year’s record was 109 patients, they said.<\/p>\n

The nurses union says nurses described the past 24 hours as hectic, staff swamped with patients with medical issues stemming from the flu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Health New Zealand group director of operations for Counties Manukau, Vanessa Thornton, said in a statement there were 457 presentations to Middlemore’s ED in the 24-hour period from midnight on Wednesday, following consecutive days of high demand for care<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thornton said this reflected increased seasonal illness in the community.<\/p>\n

“Additional staffing and operation support is being brought on at Middlemore, and we are reviewing elective services.<\/p>\n

“Where appropriate, patients are being moved from Middlemore to Manukau Health Park to improve hospital flow, and we are looking to maximise the use of Hospital in the Home and work regionally with other hospitals to improve patient flow and free up capacity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An emergency department (ED) doctor at Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital says there were more than 100 people waiting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-588649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588649","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=588649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}