A commissioner's meeting yesterday considered a report on frequent attenders at emergency departments, which found a small number of people fast became familiar faces to nurses and doctors.
During the initial survey period, from January 1 to June 30 last year, one Dunedin resident racked up 44 visits to the emergency department, while another was seen by clinicians 30 times.
"Frequent attenders had high and complex needs, many with multiple non-emergency admissions to Dunedin Hospital and Southland Hospital."
In total, 35 Dunedin residents amassed 568 visits to the city hospital emergency department, while 24 Invercargill people arrived at Southland Hospital for help more than 10 times each in the same period.
Many of Dunedin's regular emergency department attendees were also regular users of mental health services, followed by surgical services and medical services.
However, in Invercargill the majority were admitted to surgical and medical services and 11 of the 24 had not used community mental health services.
SDHB strategy, primary and community executive director Lisa Gestro said staff had repeated the research exercise for the following two six months periods, and had found a similar pattern.
"The numbers of individual visits, 872, stayed consistent over the subsequent two six-month periods with 827 and 823 total presentations."
Those visits were made by 61 and 57 individuals respectively.
"Of those, there is a total of 148 patients who had 10 ED presentations or more, so largely they are different cohorts of people."
An earlier version of the report had had more work done on it, including adding the ethnicity of regular attendees.
That found that Maori were disproportionately represented, which had resulted in the SDHB's Maori health directorate becoming involved with the issue.
"That means we have been able to focus our efforts and they [the Maori health directorate] now have a presence in our emergency departments," Mrs Gestro said.
A group was now meeting semi-regularly to monitor those patients, and the SDHB intended to work closely with primary health, mental health and community health services to help keep those people out of the emergency ward, Mrs Gestro said.
