Secondary Care Acute Admissions 11 Apr 2024

The emergency department have had an increased number of patients presenting after seeing their GP without the appropriate speciality accepting the patient and an electronic referral being sent. This maybe due to a number of new GPs arriving to the area who are not aware of the protocol.
 
Please make sure that when there is a need for an acute admission you phone the appropriate speciality team via the hospital switchboard (07 5798044) to discuss your request for admission. Remember to state whether you want a Tauranga or Whakatāne team. This needs to be followed up by the acute hospital electronic referral form, stating the speciality you are referring to and the person you have spoken to.

If the admission is needed before the team is available, then a phone call to discuss it with the emergency department is needed.
 
There is a “one call” policy with Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora which states “ Where an inappropriate team has fielded the call, the receiving medical practitioner should explain why they feel that this is the incorrect service but accept the patient on behalf of the hospital and then pass the details onto the appropriate receiving medical team.  Phone referrals called to ED because of GP inability to contact the inpatient specialty team will be accepted by the ED Senior Medical Officer (SMO) and details passed on to the clinical team”.
 
You may need to politely remind them of this, and you still need to follow this up with an electronic referral.

Kind regards, 
The Bay Navigator team