High hopes for new private hospital in Hawke’s Bay

Health officials in Hawke’s Bay hope a new private hospital will relieve the backlog of so many people waiting for surgery.

Kaweka Hospital, in Hastings, held its official opening today.

Andy Dowley is an ear, nose and throat surgeon. He was one of the original doctors who helped lead the Kaweka project.

He said his department at the public hospital had not increased the operating time it had for surgeries in 35 years.

“So we couldn’t provide the needs of the community – about two thirds of our patients were being turned away,” he said.

“We needed somewhere bigger, somewhere new and somewhere up to date.”

He will perform surgeries at both the public hospital and Kaweka.

Ear, nose and throat surgeon Andy Dowley
Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin

He thought the new gear at Kaweka Hospital was “world class”.

“The operating theatre is much bigger, it means you can move around in it better. The kit is the latest kit, which all means the staff within theatre can do the very best job for the patients.”

The public hospital in Hawke’s Bay currently has around 2700 people waiting for elective surgeries.

Over 1300 have been waiting more than four months.

It is hoped there will be positive change – taking stress off the under-resourced public hospital, which is just over the road.

The expectation is Kaweka will take between 1000 and 1500 surgeries a year, according to Kaweka Hospital’s managing director Colin Hutchison.

Kaweka Hospital managing director Colin Hutchison
Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin

He said the world over was facing huge health problems.

“Across the world we’ve got an ageing population with huge health needs and most governments are struggling to invest around the countries as required.”

He said that had been the case in Hawke’s Bay.

“There’s been a lack of surgical facilities for many years and so as a group of senior doctors here in Hawke’s Bay, we’ve just taken it upon ourselves to actually problem solve. We’ve raised about $35 million dollars from Hawke’s Bay families to build this new surgical facility.”

At Kaweka, there are four large operating rooms and 10 inpatient beds. They expect about 30 to 50 patents a day.

A three-story building next door is on its way and should be open by 2025.

Hutchison said that would feature a 31-bed ward along with intensive care, a full radiology suite, an cardiology lab and about 50 outpatient rooms.

Despite the huge health worker shortage, Hutchison said they had no trouble finding staff.

“Recruitment’s gone really well – we’ve got an amazing leadership team, so they’ve been able to attract high quality staff and across both the nursing staff and the technicians, we’ve been delighted of the calibre of candidates that have joined us.”

Minister oof Health Andrew Little was there to cut the ribbon.

Kaweka Hospital managing director Colin Hutchison with Minister of Health Andrew Little.
Photo: RNZ / Tom Kitchin

He was not worried about private hospitals poaching staff available for the public, saying the key was to train new nurses.

“We have roughly 8000 nursing students in the country at the moment. We produce about between 1,800 to 1,900 nurse graduates a year and right now we offer places to every nurse graduate into our public system.”

He thought Kaweka Hospital should scale some of those long wait times back.

“As all public hospitals are looking at how they deal with their long waiting lists, having partnerships with private hospitals is one way to do that. So there’s now options here for the local hospital to partner with Kaweka Hospital to help alleviate some of those waiting lists.”

The first operation at Kaweka will be in a month, on 29 August.

Chris Ash, the chief operating officer of Te Whatu Ora Hawke’s Bay, which runs the public hospital, said he was looking forward to working with Kaweka for the benefit of the community, and building their relationship.

“I was delighted last week to meet with representatives of our local independent sector providers, Kaweka included, to explore how we make that [relationship] a reality in practice. We need to look at systems that allow patients to flow seamlessly between public and private provision, to allow clinicians to work in a way that is hassle free across public and private settings.”