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

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This site is for information only. The information provided does not in ANY way represent medical care or attention. We recommend that you seek the advice of your doctor if you have any queries or questions. The information contained on this website is derived from a number of sources. While the West Coast District Health Board has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that all information is from reliable and reputable sources and is accurate, it accepts no liability or responsibility for any acts or omissions, done or omitted in reliance in whole or in part, on the information. The West Coast District Health Board accepts no responsibility for the manner in which this information is subsequently used.

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The West Coast District Health Board is not responsible for the contents or reliability of the linked websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. Listing shall not be taken as endorsement of any kind. The West Coast District Health Board cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and the West Coast District Health Board has no control over availability of the linked pages or documents.

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Any reference to a particular product or commercial website in this document is to be taken as an example only and does not constitute an endorsement by theWest Coast District Health Board.​

Privacy

This is how we deal with information about your visit to our website.

Information collected and stored automatically

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will gather and store certain information about your visit automatically. This information does not identify you personally. We automatically collect and store only the following information about your visit:

  1. The Internet domain (for example, “www.acompany.co.nz” if you use a private Internet access account, or “www.youruniversity.ac.nz” if you connect from a university's domain) and IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you access our website;
  2. The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;
  3. The date and time you access our site;
  4. The pages you visit; and
  5. If you linked to or visited the West Coast District Health Board's website from another website, the address of that website.

We use this information to help us make the West Coast District Health Board's site more useful to visitors – to learn about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors use. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.

If you send us personal information

If you choose to provide us with personal information – by filling out a form with your personal information and submitting it to us through the website – we use that information to respond to your message and to help us get you the information you have requested.

All personal information collected by the West Coast District Health Board will be managed in accordance with the requirements of the Privacy Act and Health Information Privacy Code.

We only share the information you give us with another organisation if your inquiry relates directly to that organisation, or as otherwise required by law.

We do not create individual profiles with the information you provide or give it to any private organisations.

In some instances your data is stored by external secure online service providers. We currently use Survey Monkey for some of our online submission forms.

West Coast District Health Board does not collect information for commercial marketing.

If you believe that your rights under the Health Information Privacy Code have been breached you can make a complaint either to the West Coast District Health Board using our complaints form or to the Privacy Commissioner (P.O. Box 466, Auckland).

Website security

For website security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, this government computer system employs commercial software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorised attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Except for authorised law enforcement investigations, no other attempts are made to identify individual users or their usage habits. Raw data logs are used for no other purposes.

Unauthorised attempts to upload information or change information on this service are strictly prohibited and may be punishable.

Links to other websites

The West Coast District Health Board website has links to government agencies, health organisations, and in some cases to private organisations. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site. West Coast District Health Board does not have control over the policies or content of government or private sites outside of West Coast District Health Board which we link to for public convenience.

Page last updated: 6 May 2019

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