DHB able to carry out more surgery
The recruitment of two anaesthetists will allow the South Canterbury District Health Board to expand its services and access additional income.
The arrival of Canadian Dana Hirsch and Briton Sofia Huddart has boosted the number of anaesthetists at Timaru Hospital to 12.
SCDHB clinical director anaesthetics, Dr Peter Doran, said the new recruits would give the hospital more resilience to deal with an increasing workload.
The extra capacity in staff would allow the SCDHB ‘‘to take on extra surgical work from outside the DHB as well from MidCanterbury and North Otago’’, he said.
This plan was separate from the South Canterbury elective surgery wait list or funding for that wait list and as such would have no impact on it, he said.
‘‘It allows us to concentrate on service development and improvement so it enables the process of making things better.
‘‘Everyone in the department has a speciality service so the fact that there are enough of us means we can concentrate on improvement issues.’’
Huddart and Hirsch were hired after a job-sizing process last year which analysed the amount of work and the anaesthetists required in Timaru Hospital.
‘‘We’ve employed four new people in the last year, part of that was replacing people who have left and part of the expansion in our department to meet the greater demands,’’ Doran said.
‘‘Demand increases every year as we have managed with too few anaesthetists every year.
Huddart started at Timaru Hospital on August 31 after practising in Auckland for four years.
Hirsch arrived from Perth, Australia, on September 14 after undergoing two weeks of managed isolation with her general practitioner husband Dr Tim Ford.
‘‘This is a fantastic place for our son. It has good schools and all the outdoor stuff we like such as mountains which we love.’’