Southern Cross Healthcare Interim CEO comments on vaccination status required in its healthcare facilities

Southern Cross Healthcare strongly believes that all New Zealanders are entitled to access healthcare services when they need them. We will not use a patient’s unvaccinated status as a reason to deny them access to our healthcare facilities.

We continue to encourage all eligible New Zealanders to become vaccinated, and we have sophisticated and detailed screening processes in place to keep our patients and people working in our hospitals safe. At Southern Cross Healthcare we provide quality accessible healthcare for all New Zealanders; and this is a safe, pragmatic approach to allow us to do just that.

Our employees, medical specialists, and contractors are all required to be vaccinated.

We have ensured the safety of our patients, employees, medical specialists, and contractors throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This has comprised rigorous testing regimens to minimise the risk of transmission of the virus in Alert Levels 3 and 4, in particular testing of patients within 48 hours of admission to our facilities.

Our planned approach is to continue to risk-assess all patients prior to admission, to minimise the risk of having COVID-19 on admission. We are currently developing a testing strategy against the Covid-19 Protection Framework.