New Health Minister Simeon Brown, who had been in the job for just six days at the time of the announcement, alongside MP for Napier Katie Nimon, on Thursday announced an investment of $29.3m to refurbish and expand the hospital’s radiology department and $37.2m for the region’s first publicly available Linac machine.
Linac machines are used to treat cancer, most commonly used for external beam radiation treatments. They work by speeding up electrons to deliver therapeutic X-rays or electrons to a patient’s tumour.
The closest public hospital to Hawke’s Bay with access to a Linac machine is in Palmerston North.
Brown said the investment will double CT scanning capacity at Hawke’s Bay Hospital to ensure more locals can benefit from access to timely, quality healthcare and an estimated 500 fewer people will need to travel outside the province for specialist cancer treatment.
“As we know, thousands of New Zealanders and their families are affected by cancer every year,” Brown said.
“Having more access to radiology services in Hawke’s Bay will mean shorter wait times and faster treatments ... with a new CT scanner being able to deliver a further 6000 to 10,000 scans per year.”
A report completed by Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora in April 2023 detailed a host of serious problems in Hawke’s Bay’s radiology service that resulted in documented harm to patients and severely affected staff morale.
The report cited one case, investigated by the Health and Disability Commissioner, in which an unnamed man in his 70s was found by a CT scan to have a possible malignancy, but the results were not read by a clinician until more than a year later. He died of cancer soon after.
Staff had so little trust in their IT system at the time of the report that they printed out reports and circulated paper copies, although this was risky because there was no way of verifying that they were delivered to the right place or read.
There were also problems with scans sent to an external provider, the review found.
In one case, a paediatric patient was referred by the hospital’s emergency department for a CT scan of their head and cervical spine. But the radiology report came back with a report and images in different folders, which resulted in a delayed diagnosis of a cervical spine fracture.
One clinician told the reviewers at the time: “There has not been a single day in 12 years without an IT issue related to this system.”
Enabling works will commence this week on the radiology refurbishment and expansion project, with radiology services expanding into the building next door to its current space.
Stage one of the project is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, with stage two projected to be completed mid-2027.
“So, they’re getting cracking straight away,” Brown said.
Nimon said Thursday’s announcement showed “progress is happening”.
When asked a question around Napier’s hospital services, she said, “The best thing we can do is put money into a regional hospital.”
“We don’t have the population for two separate hospitals, and they wouldn’t be able to provide the services or the staffing.
“A key reason why we’ve got the four-lane expressway being progressed as quickly as it is because it’s about access between these two cities, which are so close, and we are one region.”
Nimon said the Government’s focus is having the single hospital become the best it can be for Hawke’s Bay.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.
* An earlier version of this story said the private Kaweka Hospital in Hastings has a Linac machine. This was incorrect.
