Hospitals' gear goes walking

While hospitals across the country report doses of drugs and incubators going missing, in the Bay of Plenty patients are sticking to wheelchair, walking frame and shoehorn thefts.

Information released to SunLive under the Official Information Act shows Bay of Plenty District Health Board lists 39 items of equipment as stolen from either Tauranga Hospital's rehabilitation centre or Whakatane Hospital's equipment store in the last year.


In the last 12 months six wheelchairs have been reported as stolen from Bay of Plenty hospitals.

This year's figures include 18 toilet aids, nine showering aids and six walking frames and wheelchairs a-piece.

Showering equipment includes shower stools, bath boards and wheeled commodes. Toileting equipment includes raised toilet seats and over toilet frames.

This figure is one up on the 38 items reported stolen in 2013 but below the 50 and 44 reached in 2012 and 2011 respectively.

Of these items, toileting aids seem to be the most popular, recording figures of 18, 16, 17, and 16 in the last four years from 2014 to 2011. Next highest are showering aids with nine, eight, 13 and 10.

The New Zealand Herald last month reported items including incubators, beds and $25,000 worth of laundry are among items missing from district health boards in the last year.

At Counties Manukau, two incubators, two beds, 40 blood pressure meters, 40 electronic thermometers and an ultrasound foetal heart detector were among its stolen items list, as was a syringe of 15 per cent cocaine solution, five doses of morphine and two doses of methadone.

Wanganui reported $25,454 as missing and Hutt Valley was missing 10 wheelchairs and 50 thermometers.

But in the Bay, items are not even been stolen from the hospitals themselves, but are more often a case of patients failing to return loaned items.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board chief executive Phil Cammish says the equipment deemed stolen is loaned from either centre to assist patients in their recovery following a hospital stay.

What's not recorded in the list is small items of little cost, including long-handled shoe horns, and cushions – of which about 12 go missing per year.

Phil says none of these items can be replaced by the Ministry of Health as a long-term need due to costing less than $50.

Phil says to deal with the light-fingered problem therapists are sent a list every month of equipment needing review, and a process is in place to try retrieve wayward items.

'Patients are contacted in the first instance by phone to review the need for the loaned equipment.

'Should they have an assessed need for long term equipment, this is the applied for through the Ministry of Health.”

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