Cardiac surgery services at Dunedin Hospital are under pressure due to a sudden influx of severely ill patients.
Delays to heart operations are not a new issue for the hospital.
In 2016, Mercy Hospital performed cardiac surgery for Dunedin Hospital to help clear backlogs, and last year a patient died alone at home after his cardiac operation was postponed for the fourth time because of a bed shortage Cardiac surgery services were "constrained" at the moment due to a lack of intensive care beds for patients to recover in post-surgery, Southern District Health Board specialty services executive director Patrick Ng said.
"Recently, we have had several cases where very sick patients have required ICU care," he said.
"We must always prioritise available beds to the sickest patients and as a consequence we have been in a situation where we have a shortage of ICU beds.
"A shortage of available ICU beds appears to be a problem for other DHBs in the South Island as well."
Cardiac surgery delays were an issue again last year when the Otago Daily Times highlighted the plight of Merv Telfer, who had bypass surgery postponed seven times.
In the wake of that and cases similar to Mr Telfer’s, the SDHB added an extra ICU bed specifically for cardiac surgery patients.
Mr Ng said that worked well to start with, but the surge of sick patients had proved too many to handle and created a shortage of beds.
The SDHB hopes a rebuild of its ICU, under way at present, will help ease the situation, but that will not be completed until March next year.
The ICU is being combined with the High Dependency Unit to create a co-located ICU/HDU service with 22 bed spaces; the first phase, of 12 beds, is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.
"We are working on longer-term solutions to help us manage peaks in demand and the challenge of providing beds and care for both acute and planned surgery," Mr Ng said.
"This includes through our partnerships with private providers, and looking at the opportunities our new ICU may offer to ensure consistent ICU bed availability year-round to reduce postponements of surgery."
