Plan for shared gastroenterology

Vivian Blake
Vivian Blake
Dunedin staff will lead the project to develop an Otago and Southland shared gastroenterology service.

The project, part of the Southern District Health Board's "one service, many sites" plans, has chief operating officer Vivian Blake as its sponsor, consultant Dr Martin Schlup as clinical leader and emergency medicine and surgery group manager Dr Colleen Coop as the project leader.

At this stage, it is not known how long it will take to develop a combined service.

Last year, the Southland service reported on its "light at the end of the tunnel" three-month pilot project, which aimed to develop a fair and single-access endoscopy service and develop the role of the endoscopy nurse.

Among the benefits resulting from the redesigning and streamlining of its referral process was standardisation of the process so that patients were seen according to clinical need.

More patients were seen and, with better data collection, there was improved understanding of the demand, capacity and activity within the service.

More consistent prioritisation of referrals was noted.

In the pilot, one consultant prioritised the referrals. (In Dunedin, one consultant, usually Dr Schlup, would initially read all referrals, before collating them and sending them out to a panel of consultants who would later decide who qualified.)Better communication between GPs and the hospital had also resulted.

Southland had the second-highest rate of publicly funded colonoscopies per head of population in the country, according to the pilot project team.

In the 2008-09 year, Otago had the lowest rate of such procedures in the country.

Otago and Southland have the highest rates of colon cancer in the world.

 

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