{"id":18580,"date":"2026-09-23T15:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18580"},"modified":"2026-09-23T15:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T03:30:15","slug":"mental-health-callouts-police-handover-at-eds-to-reduce-to-30-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18580","title":{"rendered":"Mental health callouts: Police handover at EDs to reduce to 30 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NZ Police’s handover of patients at emergency departments will reduce to 30 minutes, as it rolls out the final phase of its withdrawal from mental health related jobs – changing its earlier plan to reduce the handover to 15 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The ‘Mental Health Response Change Programme’ – which was initially planned to be completed in September 2025 – was delayed after widespread safety concerns from health workers, ambulance workers, unions<\/a> and the Mental Health Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Health New Zealand (HNZ) announced in a statement on Wednesday that it had agreed, alongside police, that a universal 15-minutes handover time was not currently safe, feasible or sustainable to implement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“A 30-minute handover is a more practical, realistic, and achievable next step,” the statement said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Our district teams also identified several factors that can affect handover times, including notification between agencies, seasonal Emergency Department demand and capacity, the clinical needs of other patients and the challenges of providing services across large rural areas,” it said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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HNZ said it was still working with police to confirm when the 30-minute handover change will take effect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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According to HNZ, police data between May and July 2026 showed 84 percent of ED handovers were done within 60 minutes, and 50 percent were completed within 30 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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HNZ said the decision had been informed by feedback from district leaders, staff and partners across the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In situations where a 30-minute handover was not possible, police would remain on site as safety concerns required, said HNZ.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meanwhile, HNZ said no decisions had been made yet on the considered changes to welfare checks – which was also part of the last phase of changes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the original plan, police would review their response to welfare checks when there was no risk of criminality or to life or safety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier, a mental health nurse told RNZ<\/a> there could be a risk to lives if there were no alternative agencies to conduct the checks in the place of police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Other changes already implemented in the programme to date include reduced police presence at mental health facilities; tightening requirements for police assistance with the transportation of mental health patients; new guidelines for police attendance to non-emergency mental health related requests; and reduced police involvement in finding mental health patients who go missing from health facilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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HNZ said the changes had so far resulted in police spending significantly less time in EDs, and stronger local partnerships between HNZ staff and police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The safety of people receiving care and our staff remains the highest priority. Health NZ does not expect staff to put themselves at risk or remain in dangerous situations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There may be times when staff need to withdraw from an unsafe situation until appropriate risk management measures are in place,” said HNZ.<\/p>\n

Source: RNZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NZ Police’s handover of patients at emergency departments will reduce to 30 minutes, as it rolls out the final phase of its withdrawal from mental health related jobs – changing its earlier plan to reduce the handover to 15 minutes. The ‘Mental Health Response Change Programme’ – which was initially planned to be completed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18582,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18580\/revisions\/18582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}