Radiology accreditation cancelled

Concerns over services offered

A SHORTAGE of competent staff, asbestos issues, outdated computer systems and chronic waiting lists have led to Dunedin Hospital’s radiology service losing its accreditation status.

International Accreditation New Zealand — a Crown entity which audits laboratories and inspection bodies and certifies their competence — has warned the Southern District Health Board several times through ‘‘corrective action requests’’ the service could lose its certification.

IANZ’s patience wore out last month and it stripped the radiology service’s accreditation.

IANZ rejected an SDHB appeal.

While all radiology department services are operational, not being accredited means the SDHB cannot claim ACC revenue of about $300,000 a year.

‘‘We would not remove accreditation unless we had concerns about the services being offered,’’ IANZ chief executive Llewellyn Richards said.

‘‘If it was something trivial we would ask for it to be corrected and expect it to be corrected.

‘‘When we are talking about lack of resources and insufficient competent staff, that obviously has implications for the population.’’

Hospital radiology services are not mandated by the Ministry of Health so there is no requirement for DHB hospitals to be accredited, Dr Richards said.

‘‘Having said that, virtually every single hospital in the country has got its radiology service accredited because it is assurance for them that they are doing things properly and everything is OK.’’

Southern DHB chief executive Chris Fleming said IANZ’s main concerns were the quality of radiology’s facilities, its information system and the waiting list for scans, particularly MRIs.

Asbestos in the radiology area had resulted in the ceiling being closed, raising issues with air handling systems, Mr Fleming said.

‘‘Remedial work has been commissioned and will be completed by the end of this month.

‘‘We also needed to have a formalised arrangement in place with the private radiology provider for back up in the event of any equipment failures.

‘‘This is now in place.’’ Mr Fleming said the radiology information system was old and support for it was due to end in mid 2019.

‘‘We are in discussion with the supplier to extend support out beyond mid2019, and we are also fasttracking the business case to replace the system.

‘‘To address this issue for accreditation purposes we simply need to finalise the extended support and have a supported business case.’’

However, there was a significant backlog of MRIs.

‘‘We are working with our staff and are in the final stages of the business case development for extending capacity to meet this demand,’’ he said.

He was confident it would be approved within the next month.’’

Earlier this month the Otago Daily Times reported chronic delays for patients awaiting MRIs. Some people were being asked to wait nearly nine months.

Mr Fleming hoped the SDHB would be ready to regain accreditation in June.

IANZ said the SDHB could reapply whenever it was ready to do so.

However, Dr Richards said the SDHB faced the same issue as all radiology services nationwide — finding staff.

‘‘For some specialist areas, the country is critically short of competent people, particularly within the DHB sector,’’ he said.

‘‘Maybe they will end up partnering with private service providers or come up with some other solution. I don’t know.’’

❛ Remedial work

has been commissioned and will be completed by the end of this month SDHB CEO Chris Fleming