Saturday surgery at Dunedin Hospital to reduce acute orthopaedic waiting lists is a step closer.
The clinics have long been mooted as a possible way to reduce the Southern District Health Board’s lengthy waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery, which total more than 1100 cases and have been steadily climbing in recent months due to staff shortages and the impact of Covid-19.
At an SDHB hospital advisory committee meeting yesterday board member John Chambers asked if there had been any progress on getting a Saturday acute surgical list started, noting it had been discussed for some time.
Chief operating officer Hamish Brown said the SDHB had just met with the senior doctors union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, and had reached agreement regarding provision of anaesthesia services for the weekend clinics.
"We are still working through that but it will basically give us far greater anaesthesia resource and enable us to get that started," Mr Brown said.
"Fundamentally at the moment we are not able to plan because our workforce is under critical strain ... having people call in sick or to say that they are isolating is a real operational challenge, but we are still very much committed to increasing acute surgery hours."
Southern was also extending anaesthetists to a 10-hour day, in line with most other DHBs, a move which should increase the number of operations able to be done on weekdays, Mr Brown said.
Acute surgery had been limited at Southland Hospital due to the Covid-19 outbreak on its wards last month, and last week’s Covid outbreak at Dunedin Hospital is likely to have a similar impact on operation numbers, and eventually waiting lists.
Mr Brown said planned care across southern had been limited by available inpatient beds, and was being scheduled to try to avoid having surgery teams sitting idle from on-the-day cancellations.
"Throughout the last few weeks we have been running three acute theatres, just to try and keep the beds turning over."
The board was also outsourcing as many operations as possible, within the constraints of how many operations other hospitals could perform, Mr Browns said.
Outsourcing would continue into June, and negotiations were being finalised for a long-term contract with a private provider.
- The SDHB plans to introduce six scholarships to boost its anaesthetic technician work force. Anaesthetic technicians have been difficult for the SDHB to recruit and a shortage has often affected surgery lists, especially in Southland.
The scholarships would hopefully mean the service manager spent less time on recruitment and relocation of British anaesthetic technicians, a report said.
"Both [Dunedin and Southland hospitals] are dependent on agency staff [locums] to meet service needs: this is not a sustainable nor cost-effective long-term approach."
Locum anaesthetic technicians cost the SDHB $155,000 in 2018: last year they cost the board $596,249.
Auckland University of Technology trains the technicians, and the university had said it was prepared to be flexible and train southern scholarship recipients in Auckland, Christchurch, or in southern, the board was told.
The board is considering two scholarship options to cover the fees of six trainees, each of which would cost $24,000.
