Surgical bus off to debut

By GREGG WYCHERLEY

A $25 million surgical bus will perform its first operations at a small East Cape hospital next month.

Te Whare Hauora O Ngati Porou, a rural hospital in Te Puia Springs, 100km north of Gisborne, will test the mobile theatre on March 8.

Staff at the 21-bed hospital, which lost its surgical capacity in 1990, have trained for the debut operations since Health Minister Annette King launched the bus last November.

The hospital's clinical services manager, Georgina Paerata, said the bus would mean that patients in the economically depressed area would no longer have to travel to Gisborne for simple operations.

Christchurch company Mobile Medical Technology NZ and Surgical Services (MSS) built the bus, with the aim of improving healthcare services in rural communities.

The project has been supported by Mrs King, who in December 2000 approved finance of $25 million over five years to build and run the bus and an extra $750,000 to cover its first year.

MSS director Dr Stuart Gowland said the Te Puia Springs trial would involve a surgeon from Gisborne and local nurses who had already been trained by the company.

A small number of low-risk elective day surgeries were planned for the unit's debut.

"This is things like varicose veins, hernias, arthroscopies," he said.

Dr Gowland said the pilot project would show the way for rural communities to regain access to medical services that had become unaffordable in small hospitals.

"The reason Te Puia Springs can have a $4.5 million operating theatre is because they share it across the country."

He said the bus was expected to visit rural areas one day every five weeks for day surgery.

Plans were under way to develop remote surgery facilities using a video link for hospitals in mid-sized cities such as Rotorua, allowing surgeons in the bus to communicate with experts worldwide.

A similar pilot scheme in Rotorua was abandoned this week when Lakeland Health found it would not be compensated for the $20,000 in Ministry of Health funding it would lose by sending patients to the bus.