Wellington Hospital's rating for training radiologists has fallen to the lowest level D rating. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington Hospital is on notice it could lose its right to train junior radiologist doctors unless it urgently cuts their workload and improves supervision.
Its rating for training has plummeted from A to the lowest level D. This denotes "multiple significant issues seriously impacting quality of training", according to the independent reviewers at the College of Radiologists.
Wellington Hospital, a national centre for training, has until March to fix the problems or lose its right to train about a dozen juniors, a blow to the whole country's capacity in a vital speciality.
The prospect of succeeding with an urgent fix look challenging with the unit in the throes of losing its clinical leader and various senior doctors and technicians.
Wellington Hospital said it was still getting its head around a downgrade of its radiology training of junior doctors.
Te Whatu Ora Capital, Coast and Hutt Valley said it only learned of this on Monday.
"Due to the very short timeframe since receiving this, and the timeframe between the assessment and receiving the report, we have not had an opportunity to comprehensively review and understand the findings."
Though the downgrade report is new, the assessment was done in February.
It had already implemented some of the recommendations, the hospital said on Thursday.
It was committed to "continued delivery of safe healthcare" and would be making every effort to address the concerns and meet the timeframes.
The downgrade is the latest in a series of shocks this year to specialist medical services falling below standard.
When Dunedin Hospital lost its accreditation earlier in the year to train junior cancer doctors because it lacked enough seniors to supervise them, the senior doctors' union warned other areas of medical care around the country could face a similar fate.
The review of Wellington Hospital found it fell short of compliance in eight out of 12 areas. After-hours workloads were sometimes high and a strain on trainees, the number of senior doctors was inadequate and teaching was an extra pressure, supervision of trainees above starter level was too patchy, and there was a lack of training in some specialised areas.
The review noted doctors were having to draw up rosters because of a lack of administration staff to help with that.
Radiologists specialise in using scans such as MRIs, CTs and ultrasounds to diagnose disease and injury.
Because Wellington Hospital is tackling long waiting lists in part by outsourcing a lot of scans to private providers, this was skewing what the trainees got to do, the review found.
Auckland Hospital turned around a D rating within weeks earlier this year, to rise to a C, but it had fewer, and more straightforward improvements to make.
Wellington has a much longer list of fixes to address, including a recommendation it hire more specialists to do the training.
However, the hospital is heading into the new year losing radiology staff, rather than gaining them.
The flow of radiologists to Australia and to a growing private sector in New Zealand, where the pay is better and the pressure less, is a problem Te Whatu Ora has failed to counter.