Waitakere Hospital

In 1945 the original Waitakere Maternity Hospital was a small building in Te Atatū. The idea of a new hospital was raised that year, but it was another ten years before a site was found for the ‘North Western Hospital’. In the ensuing years a geriatric block was built and the site also became a base for community home health and support services, child disability services and for health services to school children - public health nurses, hearing and vision testing, school dental services. HealthWest, a private primary health provider, was as of 2006 in negotiations with the hospital to be allowed to provide fee-paying patients with medical services in the hospital. While this proposed measure did not go forward as of mid-2007, it highlighted the fact that even after the NZ$60 million upgrading to general hospital status, the facility was still facing shortages, like many other public health facilities in New Zealand. In the first five months of 2008, the emergency department of the hospital was forced into partial closure 52 times, and was not open as a 24/7 emergency facility. This is being blamed on short-staffing and financial constraints of the Waitematā District Health Board. In 2017, Waitākere Hospital's $9.8 million emergency care centre expansion was opened by Health Minister Jonathan Coleman. The 1,800 m2 extension was designed to alleviate the strain on the overcrowded emergency department, which nearly doubled in annual patients from 28,000 in 2009 to almost 52,000 in 2016. The extension added an improved entranceway, modern large waiting room, four ambulance drop-off bays, three resuscitation (resus) bays, new acute bays, paediatric care facilities, and psychiatric/behavioural health facilities. The new emergency department also included rooms for minor procedures such as plasters for fractures. == Facilities ==