Hundreds of wheelchairs, walking frames, shower stools and crutches belonging to Canterbury’s public hospitals are believed to be sitting unused in garages and spare rooms across the region, and Health New Zealand would like them back.
The agency announced an equipment amnesty on Friday, asking anyone in Canterbury who borrowed mobility gear from a hospital and no longer needs it to drop it back so it can be cleaned and passed on to the next patient. There is no charge, no fine and no cut-off date, however long the item has been sitting in the shed.
Thousands of items are out on loan across Canterbury at any one time. Health NZ estimates several hundred of them are now idle in homes where the person who borrowed them has already recovered.
Sandy Clemett, Health NZ’s Chief of Allied Health, Scientific and Technical for Canterbury and the West Coast, said the service buys more gear every year to cope with the winter rush and still cannot keep pace with what goes out the door.
“We make sure we have adequate amounts of equipment and buy more each year in anticipation of demand during our busiest times,” Clemett said. “Yet we’re finding we are still loaning out more equipment than we have returned back to us.”
The items most in demand are the unglamorous ones. Wheelchairs, walking frames, shower stools, toilet chairs, elbow crutches and bed levers are the six categories Health NZ has singled out. None of them are expensive on their own, but together they are what allows a patient to be sent home rather than kept in a hospital bed.
Clemett said the agency understands why the gear goes astray. “We understand people often forget to return items once they’ve finished using them, and some equipment is cumbersome and can’t be transported easily,” she said.
“Many of these items may be sitting unused in garages and spare rooms across the region after people recover, so we’re keen to see them returned and reused when they’re no longer needed.”
Hospital staff have been phoning people who borrowed equipment to ask for it back, according to Chris Lynch Media, and those calls take time away from other work. An amnesty is cheaper than a chase.
There are five places to drop things off. Rangiora Health Hub at 161 Ashley Street in Rangiora and the lower ground carpark of the Waipapa building at Christchurch Hospital, 2 Riccarton Avenue, both take returns at any hour. Burwood Hospital at 300 Burwood Road accepts equipment at the Physical Medicine building on Gate 3 between 8am and 4.30pm on weekdays, and at main reception on Gate 1 outside those hours. The Hospital Supply Department at 4 Rapide Way in Yaldhurst is open on weekdays from 7.30am to 5pm, and Enable NZ at 78 Hammersmith Drive in Wigram from 7.30am to 4.30pm. Anyone who cannot shift a bulky item themselves can ring 03 364 0700 and staff will work out a way to collect it.
Most people who leave hospital with a walking frame never sign a rental agreement or hand over a deposit, which is part of why the gear drifts. Short-term loans are usually issued straight from the ward or by a community therapist. Longer-term equipment for people with a permanent disability runs through Enable New Zealand or Accessable, after an assessment by an occupational therapist or physiotherapist, and is loaned free for as long as it is needed. In both cases the item stays public property. It is lent, not given.
Canterbury is not an outlier, and this is not the first time hospitals here have asked. In July 2023 the former Te Whatu Ora Waitaha Canterbury made a near identical appeal, warning it was running short of the walking frames issued from Christchurch and Burwood hospitals. Jacqui Lunday Johnstone, then Canterbury’s Executive Director of Allied Health, Scientific and Technical, said at the time, “Anyone who borrowed equipment and has forgotten to return it – no matter how long ago – is asked to give it back, no questions asked”, and warned that “if we don’t get some of this equipment back there will be an impact on discharges over the busy winter months”.
That 2023 shortage was nationwide. 1News reported in August 2023 that at least five districts had put out public appeals, and that Taranaki had bought 800 new sets of crutches that year and had fewer than 150 of them left. Andrea Rowe, then Taranaki’s interim associate director of allied health, described exactly the pattern Canterbury is describing now. “They’ve popped it in the garage or in their spare room, and they haven’t thought to return it, not realising the demand on the equipment,” she said.
Rowe also spelled out the consequence for the patient waiting at the other end. “We might not have everything we need for them, so that might mean we have to keep them a little longer, or we have to find other ways of finding solutions,” she said.
That is the part that makes a shower stool a bed-blocking problem. A patient who is medically ready to leave hospital but has nothing to hold on to in the bathroom cannot safely go home, so they stay another night, and the bed they are in is not available to the person waiting in the emergency department. Every winter that maths gets tighter, and this winter is no exception, with hospitals around the country reporting sustained pressure through July and August.
Replacing gear that never comes home also costs money that would otherwise be spent on care. A walking frame is not a large item on a health budget, but hundreds of them are, and every set bought to replace one sitting in a garage is money that does not go anywhere else.
Clemett put the request in plain terms. “By returning items, we can all help support our community, so another Cantabrian can have access to what they need when they leave hospital,” she said.
It is a rare piece of health news that anyone can act on the same day they read it. If there is a frame, a stool, a pair of crutches or a wheelchair in the back of your garage that nobody has used since the hip healed, this is the fortnight to load it into the boot.
Do you have a piece of hospital equipment sitting at home that you forgot to return, or have you tried to give something back and struggled to find where it goes? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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