Staffing forces hospital department shutdown a day before Minister's visit

A staffing shortage shut down a hospital scanning department just one day before the Minister of Health turned up at it, to announce faster scanning.

Dr Shane Reti launched the first of eight new digital radiography machines at Wellington Hospital on Wednesday morning, saying, "Quicker access to more accurate scans will enable clinicians to see more patients each day."

But on Tuesday afternoon, the main radiology department had to shut for two and a half hours due to staff being on leave and not having enough technologists to plug the gaps.

"A high level of staff leave at Wellington Regional Hospital's main Radiology Department resulted in a brief closure, from 2 pm till 4.30pm on Tuesday 20 August to enable us to prioritise urgent and acute services - such as the Emergency Department, theatres, CT, etc," said general director of operations Jamie Duncan, in a statement to RNZ.

"During this time there was no impact on outpatient, inpatient, and emergency imaging from our ED x-ray rooms and no delay in patient imaging timeframes."

Unplanned leave was unpredictable given illness and personal circumstances, Duncan added.

However, the hospital has grappled with shortages of Medical Imaging technologists (MITs) and the doctor radiologists for several years.

Read more:

• Wellington Hospital risks losing right to train junior radiologists unless urgent improvements made
• Not enough trainees to replace thinning ranks of senior doctors - union

It was aiming to hire four new technologists by the end of November and six graduates at the end of the year, Duncan said.

It was recruiting "in the face of a global shortage ... and an increase in MITs taking up roles in the private sector".

Capital Coast's capacity for scanning, and the length of waiting lists, have also suffered due to long-running struggles with increasingly error-plagued technology for reporting back for diagnoses.

A big IT fix has been going on across the central region's tech for many months.

Read more:

• 800 faults as hospital scanning technology struggles
• Radiologists warn Health NZ of recurring failures in central region

Reti in a press release ahead of his answering media questions at Wellington Hospital, said: "The government is focused on building a health system that's more efficient" to serve people better.

As well as eight new machines by December, Wellington was refurbishing radiology rooms, following an upgrade of x-ray machines and radiology rooms at Hutt Hospital.

This built on a $30m investment in community-referred radiology services "to reduce barriers to x-rays, CT scans, and diagnostic ultrasounds", Reti said.