Dunedin Hospital is looking at ways to reduce waiting times for hundreds of patients who are waiting up to 45 weeks to receive non-urgent abdominal ultrasound scans.
At the end of last month, 705 patients in the two least-urgent categories were waiting to get appointments for the scans.
Patients face waits of between 10 and 45 weeks, far longer than the target wait time, set by the hospital, of four weeks.
Board diagnostic and support services manager Sonja Dillon said the waiting times were caused by high demand and limited staffing.
The board had six sonographers but two of them were in training, which affected the service because of the requirements for supervision.
The situation had applied since August last year.
Both of those in training would have finished their training by the end of next year.
There was a free referral system by general practitioners to the service, and between 40 and 70 non-urgent requests were received weekly.
All requests were graded by a consultant based on the information provided by the GP.
Ms Dillon said the long waiting time was concerning and she was "delighted" to have some GPs working with hospital staff on referral guidelines and also to ensure there were clear criteria on the grading of referrals.
Asked if one of the issues was that doctors were over-referring, Ms Dillon said it had to be realised a negative scan result was just as important to a patient as a positive one.
Obstetric ultrasound scans are done on request and no waiting time is listed for them.
Ms Dillon said this was another area where referral guidelines could be considered.
There was to be a review of ultrasound services, which would look at the pattern of referrals and what capacity the department would need with more uniform referral processes.
Improvements have already been made in the waiting times for non-urgent musculo-skeletal ultrasounds, whereas early last year some patients were waiting for up to a year.
At the end of October, those in the least-urgent category were waiting up to six weeks, compared with a year ago when the wait was up to 30 weeks.
The target waiting time is 12 weeks.
Waiting times for abdominal ultrasounds at private radiology service Otago Radiology are about four weeks.
Radiologist Dr Neil Morrison said four weeks was "a bit longer than we would like" and the staff would prefer to have it at about two weeks.
Demand for abdominal scans had been gradually increasing, he said.
