Gastro unit to be expanded

Dunedin Hospital gastroenterology department clinical leader Dr Jason Hill is looking forward to...
Dunedin Hospital gastroenterology department clinical leader Dr Jason Hill is looking forward to the redevelopment of the unit. Photo: Brenda Harwood

Dunedin Hospital's gastroenterology clinical leader Dr Jason Hill is a happy man.

In two weeks, the gastroenterology unit will move to the hospital's fifth floor, into the space previously occupied by neonatal ICU, to set up a temporary base while the eighth-floor unit is rebuilt.

Government funding has been granted for the $3.2 million project. About $2.5 million will go towards the unit's expansion and the remainder will cover the temporary relocation.

The new eighth-floor facility would increase the number of endoscopy rooms from one to three, and improve admission, recovery and cleaning areas, Dr Hill said.

‘‘The result of these changes will transform the experience of the patient, create a better working and teaching environment and, most importantly, future-proof capacity to allow us to undertake the recently announced roll-out of population bowel screening.''

The redeveloped unit, designed by architects Warren and Mahoney, is expected to reopen in February next year.

The work of the gastroenterology unit will continue on the fifth floor until then.

The funding was a testament to the hard work of staff during the past few years, who had ‘‘shown we can do the work''. Waiting times had reduced to within 10 days for urgent endoscopies and four to five weeks for non-urgent procedures, Dr Hill said.

The unit had been operating with its current format and design for the past 25 years and was ‘‘bursting at the seams''.

Fortunately, the University of Otago had agreed to free up some of its research space along the ‘‘back corridor'', which meant the new unit would increase its footprint from 500sqm to about 750sqm, Dr Hill said.

‘‘This gives us the opportunity to create a unit that will last for the next 10 years - assuming that the hospital will then be rebuilt at that point.''

At present the gastroenterology unit does up to 2700 ‘‘mixed procedures'' each year - mostly endoscopy, with some liver ultrasounds and liver biopsies, and some work with children. It has five gastroenterologists (some part-time), eight endoscopists, and a team of nursing staff.

The expanded new unit would be in a ‘‘strong position'' to accommodate up to an extra 750 people each year - meeting the predictions of increased workload due to the national rollout of the bowel screening programme. This was expected to reach the Southern DHB in January, 2018, and would be fine-tuned over time, Dr Hill said.

He is eager to make a start on the screening programme.

‘‘As a result [of the screening programme], 60 to 80 people every year in our region will be diagnosed with bowel cancer earlier than they would otherwise have been.

‘‘To me, just getting started is the main thing. We can worry about what it looks like later.''

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