Middlemore Hospital

Middlemore Hospital is a major public hospital in the suburb of Ōtāhuhu, Auckland, New Zealand. The hospital has approximately 800 beds. There are 24 operating theatres across two sites. History In 1943, during World War II, construction commenced on a 300-bed hospital at Otahuhu near the Middlemore golf course. It was built to accommodate sick and injured servicemen from the war in the Pacific and known as the Otahuhu Military Hospital. Construction took three years but by 1945, when the war in the Pacific had ended, there was no need for a military hospital and it became a civilian hospital, administered by the Auckland Hospital Board. The Auckland Hospital Board decided in 1944 that the hospital would be known as Middlemore Hospital, the name of the Thompson family farm close to where the hospital was built, referencing a family member from the 18th Century. The hospital officially opened on 3 May 1947. Dr H.J.A. Colvin was appointed medical superintendent and Miss O.M. Hollan as matron in 1947. A plastic surgery unit was established initially under the surgeons Percy Pickerill and Cecily Pickerill who commuted from Wellington from 1947 to 1950; they were followed by William Manchester (who had trained with Archibald McIndoe), John Peat (an orthodontist), Michael Flint (who had trained with Harold Gillies) and Joan Chapple. Middlemore Hospital is the largest hospital in Auckland, with around 4,700 staff providing treatment to more than 91,000 inpatients and over 354,000 outpatients per year (data from 2007). The Emergency Department (ED) is the busiest mixed (adult / paediatric) ED in Australasia, with an annual census of 98,110 patients in 2011, and the rate of presentations to ED increasing at a rate of 5–8% per annum. In 2014, Middlemore Hospital treated more general surgical patients than any other hospital in the country (11,500 patients, or over 32 admissions per day), with approximately 75% of those being emergency presentations. This number has also been rising steadily over the past few years and makes the hospital the busiest emergency general surgical hospital in the country. It is also known to care for an above-average share of expecting mothers, staff generally delivering over 20 babies per day.