Kiwis are now dying in corridors & carparks
Kiwis are now dying in corridors & carparks
Written By:
- Date published:
11:02 am, September 23rd, 2025 - 37 comments
Categories: health, Privatisation, Shane Reti, simeon brown -
Tags: Christchurch Hospital, Code Black, Code Red, doctors, doctors strike, ED, healthcare, Nelson Hospital
In September 2024, the National Party scrapped “Code Black” for emergency departments in trouble. It came as hospitals reported ED crises a month earlier.
Then Health Minister Shane Reti also pushed the threshold for “Code Red” higher – meaning health capacity had to be “critically reduced” from 120% to over 135% before hospitals were allowed to use the term.
On Sunday, 1News reported that Christchurch’s ED has been in Code Red nearly “every single day” with patients dying in corridors and in car parks, due to the resourcing crisis, and many patients now waiting over 24 hours in ED.
Last year, an ED doctor said that unless the government fixed chronic understaffing, patient harm would become unavoidable – as a Rotorua resident died waiting for ED support in August 2024
A report last month said Christchurch’s ED was already like “a third world war zone”. Nelson Hospital staff also joined the call, saying their hospital has been in crisis for months, and like Christchurch they need resources, and funding. Gisborne Hospital had already briefed Simeon Brown months earlier they are at the “brink of collapse”.
As the latest news broke, Simeon Brown took on his usual lecturing tone, telling media his repetitive story of already having instructed Health NZ on his “expectations”.
Brown also quickly announced a “$20 million investment in frontline ED services” to 1News, and later pushed it out to digital media wires as a “boost”.
But it turns out all this is simply old money, already allocated to Health NZ in Budget 2025. 1News reported on this point before Simeon’s official release admits funding will be taken from existing “baseline”.
So why the announcement?
Why the show?
Perhaps anything for Health Minister Simeon Brown to conceal National’s record underfunding of NZ Health per capita & the millions the National Party is diverting from public health & community GPs to private equity investors and private services – while they appear to intentionally push the public system to fail.
Senior doctors are striking over the next 2 days.
They are fighting not only against the pay cuts this government is giving to them, but also for NZ’s ability to attract and retain health professionals now and into the future.
Support them and their right to strike.
Our doctors and nurses are our last line of defence against a government intent on rewarding private health beneficiaries like Shane Reti and Lester Levy and moving NZ to a US style health privatisation context.
Health Graphs
Lowest GDP per capita health funding in a century
Graph Source: NZ Doctor – Follow the money to see what Budget 2024 spends on health
The USA leads the way in privatised & costly healthcare, but renders some of the worst results
I don't usually wish bad things to happen to people, but I'd really like these swing voters to all have to experience first hand their local ED between now and the election, and face reality. Then vote accordingly. The full-time RWers will never change their views.
I'd like that to also happen to the politicians concerned, except I suspect Ministers of the Crown wouldn't be left waiting on a trolley in the corridor, so they'd think there was nothing wrong.
The best possible outcome is a govt committed to a comprehensive public health system. Hint, its not this one.
The complete lack of empathy sees blood on their hands and a system that may not be recoverable all executed in a single term.
Maybe that is their goal ?
Reti, as a doctor, knows what hes participated in and calls himself a man of god. Must be the gods of wealth not health he worships.
Every time I see the phrase "man of God", I'm reminded of that scene in The Magdalene Sisters.
My partner is on an urgent waiting list. He has an active infection, surgery is the only thing that can clear it up and he has been on the list since at least May. He is exhausted, sick, and stressed.
In the meantime, he has had trips to the GP, ED, antibiotics, blood tests, CTs, US scans, radiology procedures, one overnight stay and then sent home, time off work, dressings, and trips to the district nurse as he waits. God knows how much all that costs and it still hasn't addressed the problem.
The system is broken. Patients are just put into a holding pattern. The staff are burnt out and angry that they can't do their job like they should be doing.
Our leaders are in hock to the private sector, and are willing to let people die for their ideology. I sincerely believe this is where they are at- to actually let people die, so the populace will be so resigned or terrified they will feel compelled to get medical insurance or spend all their savings on private care. And the right will tick that off as a success.
Yes, they are. And it's absolutely terrifying.
2. Is there a Code Brown status for politicians who make promises, then the opposite happens?
Has anyone bothered asking doocey if hes read the mental health reports yet given he is the minister.
Let's get rid of corridors and carparks: It is obvious that they are dangerous places.
Two items of concern noted recently in the media:
From first hand experience, I was admitted by ambulance on Wednesday into Christchurch hospital last week due to a cardiac concern. There were definitely people in beds in the corridors. I was lucky enough to be given a proper bed in the emergency department. I was seen three times by a doctor, and recieved an xray and a CT scan. I went in at about 6.30 pm and was out by about 11 pm.
So, I certainly received prompt and excellent treatment despite the fact they were obviously very busy.
I think the claim about people dying in vehicles and in the corridors was likely included a bit of hyperbole for effect. People dying in their cars may not have anything to do with busyness in the hospital. They just may not have got there on time.
The nature of hospitals is that people die there from time to time. So, it probably isn't surprising that people in the corridors die from time to time.
What we don't know is how the rates of death compare to when the hospital is at its normal level of busyness.
You only got a bed because it was potential cardiac. Personally, I've been abandoned in a corridor recovering from seizures, excruciating pain, and literally abandoned in a treatment room for 24hrs with appendicitis, because the entire hospital was gridloked. I've spent long enough in ED corridors to be very aware of the realities.
As for your statement that of course people will die in corridors from time to time. My god! Of course people die in hospital but you really don't get it do you?
The people working there know.
There's quite a lot we will never know as the NDA's, directives that gag senior clinicians and non collection of data kicked in awhile back.
Add to my previous reply- well done for having a positive experience of an ED department, but these days, that is the exception rather than the norm, and clearly that is clouding your judgement of the true situation.
Could you extend a bit of empathy to the majority who no longer receive such prompt care with added privacy? And possibly even imagine yourself or a loved one dying in a corridor, since you seem to think there's nothing wrong with that.
I am incredibly grateful for the amazing work the hospital staff do. And, I think they deserve the best pay that can be provided to them. I am not arguing about that.
I just think it is natural to use a bit of hyperbole to gain public sympathy in the context of ongoing negotiations. We can't really be sure if the deaths referred to are exceptional unless we have some actual statistics on it.
So no statistics = no issue.
A coalition MO to ensure they can spin where they want to.
Thank you TC. I'm fuming a bit too much for a polite response.
Yep – all of a piece with the Atlas Brigade's strategy of keeping the general population (a) cowed and (b) ignorant.
So was van velden's holidays act changes – nothing like a dab of relatively uncontroversial law change with a bit of cross-party support to soften the optics.
So does no statistic mean that any claim can be made?
Statistically more are likely to die in the cars or waiting room whatever medical staff do if there are more patients.
If a certain percentage are going to die in their cars or in the waiting room, then of course more patients will mean there are more likely to be cases of that happening even if there were an ideal number of staff.
Lets say that .01% of patients die in their car or the waiting room as a matter or course. So for every 1000 patients 1 patient will die in that circumstance.
Now, lets say the number of patients increases to 2000 over a given time. If the number of patients dying is 2, then the absolute number has increased, but that is just a linear extension of the trend.
But, if say the number increased to 2000 and 10 patients had died, then something else is likely to account for the increased rate.
So merely noting that patients are dying in their cars or the waiting room doesn’t actually mean anything in itself.
Good grief, you really don't get the point, do you?
But keep tying yourself up in knots attempting to justify the fact our health system has nearly fully collapsed, to the point that it's now routine to park patients in corridors.
Ahh, I see.
When a patient does die in a car park or corridor, it is traumatic to staff.
Therefore if staff numbers are kept very low, then less staff are traumatised.
This government is just being compassionate.
People die in hospitals all the time. I am just saying there should be some facts to show whether what is happening is abnormal. It wouldn't be too hard to quote some stats to support the position rather than just making sensationalist statements. It is nothing more than what you would demand of me.
I am not saying that there aren't deaths due to short staffing. But, just that we have no idea whether this is the case or not. A statement that people are dying in their cars and in the waiting room is probably a statement of fact given that undoubtably happens. But gives no indication of the degree of the problem and whether it is out of the expected range.
I find it disturbing that you believe there is an 'expected range' of people dying in cars and waiting rooms and corridors.
Ditto.
To be fair, the Author of the Post did not provide the link when referring to the story on 1news.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/09/22/ed-doctors-across-the-country-plead-for-help-in-letter-to-health-nz/
This is from an ED doctor who works in that same ED. Compare this to your anecdote: you were delivered to the ED by ambulance on a Wednesday night around dinner time, so you bypassed the car park; you were given a proper bed, so you didn’t spend long waiting in the corridors, if at all; you received an X-ray and CT-scan, so this time you weren’t even in the ED per se; you were there for about four and a half hours in total during a single visit, so a very short time, all in all.
Please stop downplaying the severity of this widespread problem that’s costing lives and is hard on staff (not to mention on friends & family).
I am not trying to trivialise the situation.
And there is no argument from me about paying doctors and nurses what they are worth. Even from a right wing market driven perspective, it makes perfect sense to pay the market rate (compared to Australia mainly) to keep nurses and doctors here. And, we probably need to bite the bullet to do that.
But, the point is that this type of situation is not entirely unusual this time of year with winter flu's etc about. I have no idea whether it is more serious than previous years, or where it ranks. But, it isn't an unusual situation to arise with emergency departments over winter months. And, if we doubled wages tomorrow, it wouldn't solve this sort of problem.
It is the sort of problem that orchards face when they need fruit picked. A sudden surge of demand which persists for a relatively short period of time.
If we were to hire enough full time staff and build enough hospital facilities to cope with the winter surge then there likely would be a lot of underutilised resources for the rest of the year.
I think we need to find a way to increase capacity around this time of year. Perhaps we could incentivise nurses and doctors to come to NZ from Britain and Europe over this time to assist with the demand during our frantic time. and perhaps shout them a NZ holiday at the end of it for their troubles. Afterall, it would be the low time of the year in terms of hospital demand for them at that time.
Or, perhaps we might be able to call on retired doctors and nurses to help out from time to time.
Maybe not trivialise, but you're doing a bloody good job at attempting to defend the situation.
This is the natural result of a good 40 years of deliberate underfunding by all governments, RW being even worse than LW. This lack of health investment and forward planning has brought us to this point.
Of course there are seasonal spikes, there always have been, but you forget the bit about how many of these people would not be presenting in EDs- often with avoidable problems and deterioration- if they had access to primary healthcare, i.e GPs. Yet, successive governments have also neglected forward planning and refuse to fund the GP system as it should be.
That statement alone is enough to confirm you really don't get it. Or don't want to.
And you have hit the nail on the head there. It isn't just this government, but a problem that has persisted for a long time across many governments. I know a lot of our doctors are getting near retirement now, and not enough has been done in the past to get more trained. At least the existing government is trying to do something about that But it won't solve the problem over night.
There is a problem here in Christchurch where 24 hour after hours medical centres aren't necessarily 24 hours anymore.
So, I think there is a lack of medical staff generally. And, the current issues are not helped due to that. But, these are problems that won't be solved over night.
So, the type of ideas I suggested might have to be a stop gap measure in the meantime.
tsmithfield, like you, I have nothing but good things to say about the care provided (over many years) to me and mine by NZ's public health services, and don't recall hospital nurses or doctors bad-mouthing govts.
But I can't help wondering if the quality and/or quantity of that care might depend to some extent on govt funding choices. Time will tell.
P.S. “The worst in a century”! This diagram was published in NZ Doctor, but what do doctors know – you could always ask for a second opinion 🙂
You could always ask for a second opinion
So long as you're willing to be on a waiting list for at least a year (if you're not booted off it first) to get said second opinion…
Yep, NAct1 is government by the sorted, for the sorted, so ‘some’ will be wishin’ and hopin’ and waitin’ and prayin’ longer than others 🙁
Ah, but Smithy, people are not dying in the corridors and car parks of Private Hospitals – and that is all that matter, don't you know!
Is that you Brooke? "We put too high a value on life during covid" "Expected Range of deaths"
You are grateful to the Doctors and Nurses for your one hospital experience, but you don't believe them, you think it is "sensationalist statements" they are making?
As CoC have stripped the backroom, and thinned the frontline, put the lowest amount of money into health for years by a huge margin, counting things and events is possibly "on the back burner"
So finding proof for doubting Thomases is moot. Mountain Tui has published charts and figures here, do you skip those? Perhaps you should read them. They show facts not feelings.
Putting $300 mil into hips and knees in the private system is not the Public System.
Putting $100mil into Hospital refurbs is petty cash from the Budget.
The Doctors and Nurses are fighting for fair. Our Public system is being wrecked, to give money to the Private system, yet you judge by one experience. Try asking your Public Doctor. He has more than one experience to draw on I am sure.
I know this will not change your mind, as you have used one experience to arrive at your conclusion, and that is plain silly if you think about it. You also accuse these well trained professionals of "overacting" by use of hyperbole and or sensationalist statements.
Why would they strike and list troubling events? You either trust their professional judgement or you trust this failing Government. Your choice.
A capital gains tax, proceeds to be invested in health system
And windfall taxes from banks, etc.