Waiting list grows while scanner stored

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 36

Waiting list grows while scanner stored

PA Auckland A $l2 million CT scanner which arrived in June last year Is still waiting to be commissioned at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland. Hospital authorities left / the machine in storage while they built a new $1.4 million 12-room suite to house it but no staff have yet been assigned or trained to run it.

The hospital transfers 762 patients a year to Auckland Hospital’s two scanners, which already have an 18-month waiting list for non-urgent cases. AU the transferred patients are sent to Auckland by ambulance, usually accompanied by a nurse, and often by a doctor. Staff believe each transfer costs $3OO or $4OO.

They have been told the

scanner cannot be commissioned until the board’s $43 million deficit has been recovered. Christmas has been mentioned as a possible starting time but no official date has been given. Specialists said the indefinite storage was not extending the life of the equipment — “the X-ray tubes deteriorate whether you’re using them or not” One radiologist said the machine would have been installed and commissioned within two or three weeks if it was owned by the private sector. “In the public health service, the less you do, the less money you spend. The cheapest option is not to use it.” '

The superintendent of Middlemore Hospital, Dr ifihne Simpson said the

scanner had not been officially handed to the hospital.

She denied the scanner had been mothballed, and said it was not yet ready to operate, but staff said all it needed was someone to push the buttons.

Money to buy the scanner was approved in 1987 when a Governmentappointed committee of specialists identified it as an urgent need in south Auckland.

Auckland has four working scanners, two of them in the private sector. Specialists say simi-lar-sized cities overseas have seven or eight times as many.

Auckland Hospital's first scanner, which is 10 years old, will soojt became uneconomic. I