How Health NZ risked putting grieving parents next to newborns in bid to ease Wellington ED crisis

Wednesday, 17 September 2025

Health NZ executives signed off a winter bed plan to take pressure off the emergency department without being explicitly warned of its most sensitive consequence: that grieving parents could end up alongside crying babies. Bridie Witton looks at how the controversial plan unravelled.

Wellington Hospital was facing a familiar crisis with too few beds and an ED so full a third of patients were cared for in corridors. Officials knew winter would only make things worse, as it did every year.

But this year, pressure was sharper still. The National-led Government had reinstated a target for 95% of patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred from ED within six hours - a goal Labour had scrapped.

Wellington, the country’s worst performer, was under intense scrutiny and official documents show only 46% of its patients were being treated in time, partly due to the too-small department size.

One proposal to free-up beds and get closer to the target was to redistribute 12 beds from maternity and gynaecology. This would reduce the overall footprint of maternity, but officials felt a similar number of patients could be seen.

Despite several risks - including a heightened risk of grieving parents sharing rooms with crying newborns and limiting partners’ support at the bedside - a senior committee endorsed it, before abandoning it in when staff and public scrutiny made it impossible to proceed.

Both unions representing nurses and midwives say the saga exposes a fundamental lack of understanding by those holding senior roles and making significant decisions at Health New Zealand.

Because while the maternity ward may appear to have free beds - similar to ED - it needs space because it can’t foresee the incoming demand, how many babies might be born on a given day. As a tertiary hospital, Wellington also takes in high-risk patients from the lower North Island and the top of the South Island.

“You do need empty beds available at all times in maternity, it is a front door service,” said Caroline Conroy, co-leader of the Midwives’ Union, MERAS. “It speaks to a lack of understanding of maternity as a service.”

Official documents show why senior executives signed off on the plan, despite acknowledging the risks.

The challenge

Te Whatu Ora set up a high-powered committee to tackle the ED gridlock and help it hit the Government target of admitting, discharging, or transferring 95% of patients within six hours. The committee, drawn from 31 senior and executive staff from the Central Region and Capital and Coast, and Hutt Valley district, met weekly in search of extra beds.

After ruling out the children’s ward as impractical, they turned to the maternity and gynaecology pods on the fourth floor — clusters of 12 beds — to see if one could be reallocated to medical patients over winter.

By June 10, Robert Blaikie, interim group manager hospital operations, and Sharon Cavanagh, group manager of women and children’s health services, who were both leading the work, discussed a “ward 2 model” for suitable female patients with the committee.

The plan would displace gynaecology patients from Pod A, and use the 12 beds for medical patients. The displaced gynaecology patients would move into the maternity pods, ultimately reducing capacity in maternity, including for labouring women.

Meeting minutes show the committee had a mixed response and asked for more information, especially around risks from fewer maternity beds.

A week later, the pair returned with a fuller proposal which painted a stark picture of ED pressures: More than 100 patients needing a bed, but only 88 beds available, leaving a shortfall of nearly two dozen stranded with nowhere to go. It said this was a “significant business risk”.

It also outlined the risks to maternity. This included the inability to manage “unexpected surges”, including from those in labour, needing an urgent assessment or out of region transfers.

Other risks were mixing gynaecology patients with maternity patients, and a reduction in single rooms from 20 to 14, meaning fewer partners would be able to stay overnight.

The memo also noted that Pods B, C, and D (where maternity patients would be consolidated) contained a “bereavement room used for birth and aftercare when whānau/families are experiencing stillbirth, neonatal loss or termination of pregnancy”.

This was something staff would later complain about, because while the bereavement room was always in the same area as general maternity, the proposal heightened the risk of grieving mothers being placed in close vicinity to newborns.

Despite acknowledging it was “not a popular proposal” in the women’s health service, the pair emphasised that the “opportunity needs to be taken to trial this” for the winter period from August to November, and the committee ultimately endorsed it.

The pushback

Shelley James, operations manager for women’s health, wrote to staff on July 3 about the trial allocation, and scheduled a July 7 briefing to answer staff questions.

Midwives began amplifying their concerns. Their professional body, the New Zealand College of Midwives, emailed James, copying in Jamie Duncan, expressing “much shared concern” for mothers and babies. Duncan both chaired the committee and was the group director operations, hospital and specialist services.

They wrote the proposal could create bottlenecks which would mean the hospital couldn’t safely take in new patients, adding it was worrying to see “our already struggling postnatal space further impacted”.

“We assume, Jamie, you will be alongside Shelley explaining how yet again Maternity has resources taken away from birthing whānau,” they wrote on July 5.

But it was only when a media query came through that the communications team were looped into the issue, on July 6. This was despite the high-powered committee acknowledging the likely “media and political interest” in the proposal as a risk, weeks earlier.

Duncan, who was signing off on public messaging, acknowledged the difficulties in an email with the media team. “We are in a situation where compromises need to be made,” he said. “How we accommodate partners to stay with mothers and babies will change.”

Staff concerns continued to mount by the July 7 meeting, and an unsent memo intended for Health Minister Simeon Brown laid out some of their concerns: Shorter stays; reduced ability to accommodate labouring people; partners being unable to stay overnight which could increase demand on midwives; and women who had lost a baby potentially being placed on a ward with crying babies.

It also raised the risk of losing even more staff due to the increased pressure.

Under mounting scrutiny, Duncan confirmed to media at 4.51pm on July 8 that the trial would not proceed.

“We understand the importance of these services to women and families across the region, and after careful consideration of feedback from a broad range of stakeholders, the proposal will not continue,” he wrote in a statement.

“Patients are at the centre of every decision we make. We will continue to work closely with our clinical leaders and teams to ensure the best possible outcomes for women accessing maternity and gynaecology care.”

More than 24 hours later, he wrote to all staff letting them know it had officially been scrapped.

The fallout

Nurses Organisation kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku, who is also a midwife, said it was “appalling” the proposal got as far as it did, adding it suggested a troubling culture where health decisions were made from financial imperatives.

The heightened prospect of grieving parents sharing a ward with newborn babies was equally disturbing. “Having worked in those situations, it's really traumatic on the family to lose a baby and to even see a baby when you're out in the streets,” she said.

“But to be trying to deal with that loss, and hearing a crying infant in that space… it takes a lot of time to work through that, [and] it’s absolutely appalling that that hadn't been given consideration.”

She called for the agency to re-establish consumer groups, who could foresee problems and speak up for patients, and strengthen the commitment to women’s health and maternity care, and to safe nurse to patient ratios.

Duncan did not respond to questions about whether the agency had got its priorities wrong when it signed off on the proposal but, in a statement, he backed the committee which made the call.

“Our steering group includes valuable clinical and operational leaders who contributed important feedback on the proposed trial,” he said.

“After receiving extensive feedback throughout the process, Health New Zealand is not proceeding with this trial.

“The proposal for grieving mothers to share a room with other babies was never made.”