HOSPITAL VISITING

All hospital visitors are recommended to wear a medical face mask. For more information about visiting: Visitors and family. See our COVID-19 page for general COVID-19 advice, detailed hospital visiting guidelines and COVID-19 tests.

See West Coast COVID-19 vaccination clinics for info on vaccinations link COVID-19 Vaccination • West Coast • Healthpoint

Last updated:
16 September 2022

Fewer visitor restrictions now apply

For visitors to all facilities (effective from and last updated on 16 September 2022)

Some visitor restrictions for all Te Whatu Ora Te Tai o Poutini West Coast health facilities remain in place, but we have relaxed others.

There is still a heightened risk to vulnerable people in hospital and so people must continue to wear a mask when visiting any of our facilities and follow other advice designed to keep patients, staff and other visitors safe.

Kia whakahaumaru te whānau, me ngā iwi katoa – this is to keep everybody safe:

  • Visitors or support people must not visit our facilities if they are unwell. Do not visit if you have recently tested positive for COVID-19 and haven’t completed your isolation period.
  • Patients in single rooms may have more than one visitor while patients in multi-bed rooms can have one visitor only per patient to ensure there is no overcrowding.
  • People can have one or two support people to accompany them to outpatients appointments.
  • Women in labour in a birthing suite, in Te Nīkau Hospital’s Maternity Ward and in Buller’s Kawatiri Maternity Unit can have the usual support people, subject to space, for the duration of their stay in our facilities.
  • Eating or drinking at the bedside is at the discretion of the Clinical Nurse Manager. Visitors must not eat or drink in multibed rooms because of the increased risk when multiple people remove their mask in the same space.
  • Hand sanitiser is available and must be used.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding as our staff work hard to protect and care for some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Mask wearing

  • Surgical/medical masks must be worn at all sites, except in counselling, mental health and addiction services where it’s on a case-by-case agreement with patients. Masks will be provided if you don’t have one. In higher-risk environments, people, including young children, may not be able to visit if they cannot wear a mask.
  • Any member of the public with a mask exemption is welcome in all our facilities when attending to receive health care and *treatment. Please show your mask exemption card and appointment letter to staff at the entrance. *Treatment includes coming into the Emergency Department, outpatient appointments, surgery or a procedure.

Visiting patients with COVID-19

  • People are able to visit patients who have COVID-19 but they must wear an N95 mask – this will be provided if you don’t have one.
  • Other methods of communication will be facilitated e.g. phone, Facetime, Zoom, WhatsApp etc where visits aren’t possible.

You must NOT visit our facilities if you

  • are COVID-19 positive
  • are unwell. Please stay home if you have a tummy bug or cold or flu/COVID-19-like symptoms (even if you’ve tested negative for COVID-19).

Te Whatu Ora West Coast Aged Residential Care facilities

Visitors are welcome at our Aged Care Residential facilities, subject to the space available. All visitors must wear a surgical mask.

More COVID-19 information

Statistics on investigations or prosecution of breaches of health and safety have resulted from inspections of establishments and homes?

RE Official Information Act request CDHB 10144, WCDHB 9323 and SCDHB

I refer to your email dated 25 June 2019 sent to the Ministry of Health which they subsequently transferred to us on 8 July 2019 requesting the following information under the Official Information Act from Canterbury DHB, West Coast DHB and South Canterbury DHB regarding Prostitution Act 2008 Compliance. Specifically:

Could you provide the statistics of:

  1. How many inspections have been carried out of a) establishments and b) homes in respect of sections 24 to 29 of the Prostitution Reform Act from 2003 until 2019, by year? To avoid doubt, these are inspections of licensed brothels or home-based sex work to ensure that Health and Safety standards are adhered to.
  2. Can you provide statistics on how many investigations or prosecutions of breaches of health and safety have resulted from the above inspections for the same period, by year
  3. Of the number of investigations, please provide data on what proportion of investigations and prosecutions relate to owner-operators versus licensed brothels.
    Canterbury DHB’s Community and Public Health division is the public health service for all three District Health Boards. As such, the powers to act as an inspector under section 25(1) of the Prostitution Reform Act (2003) are held by the Medical Officers of Health for these districts or persons they authorise under section 25 (2).
    Canterbury

There was only one case where an inspector visited a brothel to investigate a complaint and that was in 2005. No prosecution resulted. Staff have dealt with a few complaints by phone between 2004 and 2010 and there have been no complaints since then. None of these complaints resulted in any prosecution.

South Canterbury

No inspections of any brothels have been carried out and there is no record of any complaints being received.
9(2)(a)

West Coast

No inspections of any brothels have been carried out and there is no record of any complaints being received.
By way of explanation, it is difficult to carry out systematic inspections of brothels (unrelated to complaints) for two reasons:

  • Public health services do not necessarily know about what the Act refers to as ‘small owner-operated brothels’ (home-based sex work) unless they receive a complaint, as these premises are not required to be registered and seldom advertise.
  • It is also difficult to know about licensed/registered brothels as the register is held by the Auckland District Court and it doesn’t necessarily have the address of the brothel as it is the owner’s details that are registered. Public health services would need to rely on public advertisements to identify these premises.

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Page last updated: 12 August 2019

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