Patients treated in corridors as Christchurch ED repeatedly hits ‘red level’ overload

Saturday, 27 June 2026

Staff say Christchurch Hospital’s emergency department is already overflowing into corridors, with the annual winter flu surge likely still weeks away.

Respiratory illnesses frequently trigger an annual surge in hospitalisations over winter. But the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine this week warned emergency departments (EDs) across both countries were already hitting or exceeding 100% capacity.

Healthcare unions and staff at Christchurch Hospital say its ED has been no exception.

A New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate, who didn’t want to be named, said the hospital reached 109% capacity on Monday.

The ED ended up with a backlog of about 25 admitted patients stuck there at one point, with no beds to move to.

“Instead of being used as an emergency department, it’s kind of like a holding ward,” they said. “[It] stops us being able to do our core business.”

It was creating a stressful environment for nursing staff, one they feared could impact patient care.

“We’re way, way over capacity in the department as it is. We’re probably double the capacity that we can adequately see because we're holding these patients.

“So then we overflow into the corridors.”

Corridors weren’t designed for clinical care, said the delegate.

“It’s not a place that we can give the professional standard of care that we want, that we’re trained to give. And the public shouldn’t be accepting care in corridors, really. It’s not right.”

The nurse said they were starting to get more respiratory-type illnesses coming through ED, and while this was normal over the winter months, cases were “peaking earlier than what we expected”.

The full beds and crowded corridors were a manifestation of the systemic pressure the health system was under.

“That 109% is quite telling, and we’re only in June. We’ve still got the worst part of the winter to come.”

Speaking in his role as a delegate with the senior doctors’ union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, Christchurch emergency doctor Dominic Fleischer said the city hadn’t hit its annual flu surge though RSV was “just starting to climb” with flu likely to follow in weeks.

Even so, he believed this month had been Christchurch Hospital ED’s busiest June to date without any single cause. “I don't think I can blame one thing for why our numbers are so large, or so much larger than last year's,” he said.

“It’s not one particular illness or one group of patients, it’s across the board from standard respiratory-type illnesses right through to trauma. They all seem to have increased.”

The hospital was routinely hitting 100% resourced bed capacity, and as a result, ED was commonly reaching red-level overload, something Fleischer had seen “several times in the last week”.

Part of the reason Christchurch often struggled with capacity was its isolation.

“We’re a big centre with no close-by neighbours to support us. The next sizeable hospitals are four hours either north or south… So we can’t really divert like all the Auckland centres can.”

While he said Christchurch Hospital “definitely needs more beds”, the answer wouldn’t come from management alone. Primary healthcare gaps also needed to be fixed, like GP accessibility, as did the aged residential care system.

“I don’t think it’s purely funding.”

Health NZ’s Canterbury group operations director Hamish Brown said winter was always a busy time for health services, but preparations had been underway since May on its winter plan.

These included expanding urgent and virtual care options, increasing access to specialist advice, enhancing emergency and inpatient capacity, and boosting frontline staffing.

Christchurch Hospital had seen a steady increase in presentations throughout 2026, with its daily average rising from 384 patients in January to 435 in June. About 69-73% were treated and discharged without being admitted.

This was not unexpected as winter progressed, Brown said.

“Our ED has experienced an increasing number of days where demand has exceeded resourced capacity.

“Demand in our ED fluctuates from day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour, driven by a range of factors including staffing, complexities of patients, hospital occupancy.”

Even under pressure, patients with the most urgent needs continued to be prioritised, he said.

“People should continue to expect that if they need emergency care, they will be seen and treated.”

Health NZ encouraged those with non-urgent concerns to consider other options for access to acute care, including GPs, community pharmacies, or making a free call to Healthline (0800 611 116) to speak to a registered nurse.