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Board backs return of tertiary Paediatric Oncology service to Wellington
The Board of Capital & Coast DHB today gave its unanimous backing to the return of a full tertiary service for child cancer patients at Wellington Hospital.
Wellington Hospital’s Paediatric Oncology service has been offering reduced services in recent months as a result of staff shortages.
An independent review of the service, led by Prof Ross Pinkerton [director of cancer services for two Australian children’s hospitals], identified two possible options for the Wellington service – either:
- working with Canterbury DHB to establish a joint Paediatric Oncology service offering tertiary services from both hospitals, or
- reducing Wellington Hospital to a secondary Paediatric Oncology service, and sending children from the lower North Island who require tertiary care to Auckland or Christchurch.
The Board of C&C DHB today rejected the option of reducing to a secondary service, and unanimously supported working to restore a full tertiary service at Wellington. The Board also advocated the establishment of dedicated facilities for the service at Wellington Hospital, and the strengthening of staffing for the service.
“I’m proud of the way our Board has today responded to the needs of families in the lower North Island,” says Capital & Coast DHB Chair Judith Aitken.
“The Board has given its complete support to ensuring that children from the lower North Island can continue receiving a full range of Paediatric Oncology services at Wellington Hospital.
“We will now formally write to Canterbury DHB, inviting them to develop a joint Paediatric Oncology service with us. That would enable both DHBs to continue delivering a full range of child cancer services across both sites, knowing that arrangements would be in place to help one another through any difficult patches.”
Dr Aitken says today’s decision means C&C DHB can now vigorously recruit for a second full-time Paediatric Oncologist to fill the current vacancy, and for other staff to strengthen the Wellington unit.
“Until this point we were only able to look for a locum Paediatric Oncologist, as the decision had not yet been made about whether we could viably return to providing a full tertiary Paediatric Oncology service. Today’s decision commits us to seeking to re-establish that full service, and means we can now look to recruit full-time staff for a long-term service.”
The interim reduction to a single Paediatric Oncologist at Wellington meant that seven patients from C&C DHB’s catchment area for this service [encompassing Capital & Coast, Hutt, Wairarapa, Midcentral and Whanganui DHB areas] have had to travel to Auckland or Christchurch in recent months for tertiary child cancer treatment.
“We realise how inconvenient that is for the families concerned, and how that extra disruption adds stress to them at an already stressful time,” Dr Aitken says.
“Sending some patients elsewhere was the only clinically appropriate thing to do under current circumstances, as it ensured that both they and the children treated here in Wellington were safely cared for. But it’s also one of the key reasons why we have today chosen to commit ourselves to restoring the local delivery of a full tertiary Paediatric oncology service, as this will save many families from that sort of added inconvenience and distress.”
“It’s true that this solution will cost us more than the other option (reducing to a secondary service at Wellington). But that is an expense we have to factor in to the costs of our core business in order to ensure that children and families in the lower North Island are supported by this DHB at a time when they need that support the most,” Judith Aitken says.
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