Southern hospitals will eventually start operating on Saturdays to catch up with the backlog of procedures caused by Covid-19.
In newly released material provided by the Southern District Health Board to Parliament’s health select committee, the organisation said the major effects Covid-19 had had on its operations were a lag in cancer diagnosis and high demand for cancer treatment over a short space of time, and a rising number of deferred elective procedures.
The board said post-Covid it planned to outsource a higher number of procedures than ever, and would institute Saturday elective procedures for six months.
It did not say how many patients that might involve.
The SDHB already sends cancer patients to Christchurch and Wellington in an attempt to clear its waiting lists, and it also recently started sending orthopaedic patients to Timaru.
In the 2020-21 financial year, the SDHB accepted 63,900 planned elective procedures. Of those, 11,883, almost one in five people, waited longer that the prescribed deadline for a first specialist appointment.
Just over 12,000 were given a commitment they would be treated within 12 months but the timeline for first specialist appointment was breached for 29%, 3561 people.
