Recruitment efforts are continuing for new neurosurgeons to work at Dunedin Hospital, although Government health reforms announced this week mean the future of the service is unknown.
Health Minister Andrew Little announced on Wednesday that a new procurement agency, tentatively named Health New Zealand, will take over the role of the 20 district health boards and assorted public health organisations in a year’s time.
Briefing documents for the reforms criticise the "fragmentation" of DHBs and call for a nationwide system to improve consistency of care and place facilities and services where they were most needed.
In 2010, Otago and Southland residents fought a long battle to retain neurosurgery at Dunedin Hospital, successfully derailing plans to close the local service.
A subsequent fundraising campaign supported by the Otago Daily Times raised more than $3million to fund a Chair in Neurosurgery at the University of Otago.
However the service, which operates on a "one service two sites" model along with Christchurch, has never been able to be staffed with its intended roster of three neurosurgeons.
Dunedin Hospital has battled on with just one neurosurgeon, Ahmad Taha, for more than two years, and out of hours patients have had to be transferred to Christchurch at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars annually.
The proposed national health system is intended to allow people to travel to see specialists, wherever they live in New Zealand: "Hospital and specialist services will operate as a network and be managed regionally to balance national consistency and the best use of local knowledge and expertise," the briefing document said.
"There is always a concern that we could lose the service, even though we were promised that we wouldn’t," she said.
"Any changes they make, I hope they will consider the feelings of the communities which fought so hard to retain the neurosurgery service."
Southern District Health Board specialist services executive director Patrick Ng said at this stage it was business as normal and they were "continuing to try to recruit to the vacancies" in neurosurgery.
The SDHB and the University of Otago have been trying for years to find neurosurgeons to work in Dunedin, but have been stymied by an international shortage in the specialty, Covid-19 travel restrictions, and the lengthy process for overseas-trained doctors to be approved to work in New Zealand.
University of Otago pro vice-chancellor health sciences Paul Brunton also said it was business as normal on the neurosurgery front, so far as he was concerned.
"While there is still much detail to be worked through regarding changes to the health system, we do not anticipate any major change to clinical services or recruitment."
