Hawke's Bay District Health Board is urging people to seek medical help elsewhere unless it is an emergency, as an influx of holiday-goers to the region and a number of public holidays has put pressure on the Emergency Department. 

More than 150 people visited Hawke's Bay Hospital's ED each day from Saturday through to Monday - well above the average 120-130 patients normally seen on any given day.

Chief Operations Officer Chris Ash said the hospital is currently "very busy". 

While they do expect the Christmas and New Year period to be busier than normal, two or three consecutive days in the 150 plus mark and they begin to "struggle". 

"There are probably two things that that are driving that at this point of the year. We've got lots of people in the area from out of town, great news for the tourism industry, but they're not registered with local GPs and many of those people choose to use the Emergency Department as a default if they've got health care needs."

A "slow-down" in being able to move people back out of hospital is also driving the busyness.  

"That can be down to some of those services that would normally be available in the community in primary care and in home-based support providers having staff or more staff off over the Christmas and New Year shutdown so we can't get as much care in those settings." 

They also don't have the same number of doctors they would normally have over the long weekends.

"So the system tends to slow down and by the end of the second bank holiday weekend that often means we've got a lack of beds to admit new people into." 

However, normally in the first week or two of January, it goes back to a normal operating state. Already today services were back up and running "full tilt" today, and people had returned to work from the statutory holidays,  

As of late this afternoon, Ash said numbers had been "a little bit more moderated" with between 120-130 patients expected through ED by the end of the day.

"The Emergency Department is a really good place to go and the right place to go if you've got an emergency or life-threatening condition, that would be things like chest pains, strokes and trauma, but there are better places to meet your care needs in the community if you have other types of conditions even if those needs are urgent," Ash said.

These include common illnesses like colds and flu, earaches, sore throats, migraines, low-grade fevers, limited rashes and any minor injuries including sprains, back pain, minor cuts and even things like minor broken bones can be treated through these urgent care centres in the community.

Ash says a busy hospital is something they deal with all-year-round at the moment.

"We're finding increasing numbers of older people living in our communities into later life with more complex medical conditions

"What used to be winter demand pressure is no longer just a winter issue and we're having to therefore think about how we work with other providers to provide better quality alternatives for people to seek care outside of hospital."

The accident and medical centres in the region are a "really good example" of health-care providers doing just that.

"There are things that can now be done in primary care through venues like Hastings Health Centre and City Medical in Napier that five-ten years ago people would have had to have come to hospital to have had those things done.

"As somebody who works in the health system I know that if I or a member of my family had one of those sort of more minor conditions I would want to go to an accident medical centre in the community because I would get good care but I wouldn't be in a busy emergency department that is really stepped up to deal with really urgent and life-threatening conditions." 

Ash says this is advice people should apply all the time. 

A full list of accident and medical centres can be found at www.ourhealthhb.nz

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