It’s unacceptable elderly people in the South are being discharged from hospital in the middle of the night, Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds says.

“National‘s Health spokesperson Dr Shane Reti has revealed that District Health Boards across the country have been discharging patients over the age of 80, between 1am and 8am – and I am shocked to learn the Southern DHB was one of the main culprits.

“The Southern DHB had the eighth highest discharge rate amongst the country’s 20 DHBs – and in the month of January alone discharged 11 people aged over 80, in the early hours of the morning.

“While there may be some people who are self-discharging to other facilities, there is nothing safe about discharging people over 80 in the very early morning.

“Transitions of care between the hospital and the community are often complex, but especially so for our elderly where we know confusion can be increased at night, especially if social networks aren’t active and they’re in an unfamiliar environment.

“At this time support services are virtually inaccessible and pharmacies are closed.

“There isn’t any good reason to be discharging a person over 80 from hospital in the early morning.

“The Government needs to urgently explain the circumstances around these figures and reassure our elderly community that they won’t be left out in the cold in the middle of the night to free up a bed for someone else.”

Table 10730 (2021). Breakdown of patients aged 80 years and older whose time of discharge fell between 1am and 7.59am during the month of January 2021 by Ethnicity.

Please note this excludes those patients who passed away in hospital or who were discharged/transferred to another service or facility. These numbers also exclude patients who present at an Emergency Department between these hours and were not admitted to hospital.

This data was extracted from National Minimum Dataset on 30 March 2021 and includes elective, arranged and acute admissions, and casemix Included events only. Data is by DHB of Service.