It is Hospice Awareness Week – and Richard Thurlow wants to raise awareness of how dire straits the funding level is for hospices like our own in the Western Bay of Plenty.

'We are drastically short of funding now. We're getting to the point where we really need some movement on the low redress for the growth we're seeing in our area,” says the Waipuna Hospice chief executive officer.

Richard says Waipuna Hospice is facing pressure from wage increases 'because we're trying to keep parity with our colleagues in the Te Whatu Ora arena”.

'This includes nurses but also social workers and all allied health workers.”

Richard says this financial year Waipuna Hospice has to raise $7.5 million 'just to stand still”. 'This is simply to keep doing what we're doing while we're seeing a significant uptick of referral numbers.”

Patient increase

According to Waipuna Hospice statistics, in 2019 about 850 patients were seen in a year. 'This year this number will be just over 1000 patients,” says Richard.

'And the change we're seeing with our patients is they're acutely unwell when we receive them. Our patients tend to go into crisis cycles and tend to dip – and I worry diagnosis is possibly taking a bit longer than it used to as well. So we're seeing sicker patients – and more highly complex. They've got more than one condition – called co-morbidity – that is life-limiting which makes the care we give more complex.

'We're also seeing higher social needs. With a cost-of-living crisis in play, it's a perfect storm for families unfortunately.”

Plus Richard has suspicions a Covid unwind is happening 'and access to healthcare professionals is biting into this”. 'This is putting more and more pressure on a service that's at the end of the chain. You know, there's no-one else we can pass cases to – we still have to say ‘Yes', and we will for as long as we can.

'Yet we're less than 50 per cent funded [by the Government] – and it's getting to a point of almost having to be dramatical in any concept we have with the media to say: ‘We need funding'.”

Richard also believes it's a bit rude to keep asking the WBOP community for more and more. 'We've tried to help ourselves over the years. We have some fantastic second-hand shops that work amazingly hard for us...but the fundraising sphere is very competitive.”

During Covid-19 lockdowns hospices were deemed an essential service, says Richard. 'But we're not essentially funded. That is where it really feels unfair.”

Richard admits the whole health sector is under pressure. 'We've got a shortage of specialist trained staff in all areas – this just puts more and more pressure on an area that is about to break I would say.

Crisis

'We're not allowed to use the ‘crisis' word – but sorry it is. We're trying to keep a well-resourced level of service intact for our patients and families but it's getting harder and harder to find skilled and trained specialist staff. We're forever getting mutual poaching between Te Whatu Ora and us.”

Richard says with a General Election looming, there's opportunity for improvement. 'For as long as I've been Waipuna Hospice CEO – 15 years – we've been saying to governments of both colours that we need more funding. On the whole, the Government agrees that we need to be 70 per cent funded – but when we're 50 per cent funded, they're really not meeting their promises and we need to have some redress – and pretty soon. Because I know hospices around the country are in a world of pain.

'Perish the thought that we'd have to think about trimming some sort of service to our community.

'We just want to raise that awareness this week. It's got to the point of ‘I've said this every for 15 years – why am I still saying it?'”