Last week, the Southern District Health Board’s hospital advisory committee considered an update on the service which said that in the past two months the number of women overdue for gynaecology appointments in Southland had grown from 729 to 764.
The board was told a maternity leave vacancy and Covid-19 issues were major factors behind the backlog.
Jim Faherty, clinical director of Southland Hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology service, yesterday disputed that, saying he and colleagues had worked extra hours to cover missed shifts.
"We are extremely understaffed and overburdened with a service list that is not reasonable," Dr Faherty said.
"We have five full-time equivalents in Southland and we oftentimes have difficulty recruiting ... we recently had the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists do a job-sizing exercise for us and they said to do what we need to do in terms of referrals and volume that we need 9.6 FTE."
Of the 764 women on the waiting list, 17 were considered urgent, 453 semi-urgent, and 294 routine; 514 had been on the waiting list more than six months.
He said it would take 152.8 clinics to clear the waiting list: "that’s more than one full-time consultant, to do nothing but clinics all day long, for a year."
Each assessment usually led to surgery and/or follow-ups, and at least 400 of the people on the waiting list would probably need some kind of procedure.
"We are not being transparent to the fact that routine gynaecologic care will not be seen in Southland," Dr Faherty said.
"They wanted to restrict our referrals to urgent, which is cancer essentially, and semi-urgent, which is people whose lives are so affected ... they can’t function.
"All the routine stuff like chronic pelvic pain, daily urinary incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, those people will not be seen."
SDHB chief operating officer Hamish Brown told the advisory committee last week that the Southland service was "fragile" and discussions about whether to alter the criteria for referral to it were sensitive and ongoing.
"A lot of that flows back to primary care and places extra pressure on an already stretched primary care sector.
"It is one way of us controlling the flow into the hospital so our services look more compliant, but it doesn’t necessarily do much to reduce the burden of disease in the community."
Board member Moana Theodore said while it was important that urgent cases be seen as soon as possible, the discomfort being suffered by women on the waiting list and the impact on their quality of life should not be forgotten.
Board member John Chambers said the service’s wait list was enormous and "nibbling away at it" was not going to solve the problem.
"I wonder whether the work force in gynaecology needs to be rethought or other options explored such as outsourcing."
Mr Brown said additional funding had been granted by the Ministry of Health and a new senior medical officer was expected to begin with the service in September as a result.
