Taranaki Base Hospital has only a quarter of the radiologists it should have. Photo: Google Maps
An acute shortage of radiography staff at Taranaki Base Hospital means patients are waiting months longer than they should be for critical scans to diagnose cancer and other serious conditions.
Thousands who have had scans are also waiting months for the results.
Health New Zealand has apologised for the lengthy wait times and says it is putting together a plan to address the backlog by the end of the month.
Taranaki Base Hospital has only a quarter of the radiologists it should have, with just 2.2 FTE doctors to cover 8.8 positions and is chronically short of radiographers and sonographers.
APEX represents 1500 medical imaging technologist nation-wide.
Taranaki advocate Omar Hamed said radiology services at Taranaki Base were "going into crisis" mode.
"What we can see is that they have six medical imaging technologists or radiographers missing from their complement. They should have 25 radiographers, but they only have 19.
"They should have 3.5 FTE sonographers or ultrasound technicians but they have less than 1.5 FTE and we can see for the radiologists, who are the medical doctors who report on the images and are represented by the Senior Doctors Union, there should be 8 FTE and they only have two."
Hamed said there was a backlog of medical images waiting to be captured and thousands of x-rays and scans were going "unreported" - not formally interpreted and recorded by a specialist - which could lead to missed abnormalities and delays in diagnosis.
APEX believed there were more than 6200 unreported x-rays in Taranaki, 56 MRIs, 49 CT scans, and 54 ultrasounds.
Hamed said the worst delays were for ultrasounds.
"Urgent unltrasounds which should be done within days were taking four weeks or up to a year and then semi-urgent ultrasounds were taking a year to 18 months or up to two years essentially."
He said the medical conditions involved were sometimes severe.
"You're talking particularly cancer, particularly the kind of imaging that's necessary for moving ahead with surgical procedures. Your talking about any problem with the heart or brain and internal medicine generally."
Taranaki Base Hospital group director of operations Wendy Langlands said its priority remained providing radiology services to patients and a plan was being put in place to address issues with medical imaging.
"We acknowledge and apologise for lengthy wait times for radiology imaging due to significant workforce shortages. These wait times are longer than we would like."
Langlands said like some other radiology units across the country, the Taranaki Radiology Unit had vacancies due to the global shortage of specialist imaging technologists and radiographers.
"We are continuing efforts to recruit to vacant positions - this is a priority. While we do this, we have robust mitigations in place to ensure patient care continues."
"We can reassure people test requests are triaged and prioritised by a radiology specialist. The most urgent patients receive the requested diagnostic test, and other patients receive their examinations in turn.
"However, we acknowledge and apologise for delays in patients receiving test results."
Langlands said of 6000 "unreported" cases raised by APEX, about half "had actually been reviewed but not recorded as such".
"We have a plan in place to ensure the rest are addressed by the end of this month."
The details of staff shortages at Taranaki Base follow the story of a New Plymouth woman who spoke to RNZ after she waited a month for the results of a semi-urgent pelvic ultrasound.
Health New Zealand apologised to the woman, saying the scan results should have been reported back between 7 and 10 days, but it was struggling with staff shortages.
The woman's experience was reflected in dozens of social media posts, pointing out similar problems endured by other Taranaki residents including long waits to be seen and to get scan results.
Hamed said APEX members had held a stopwork meeting at the hospital.
"They're exhausted and fed up and they haven't seen anything from management that recognises the seriousness of the situation or any sign from management so far that there's a plan in place to deal with it."
He said radiology staff were considering reducing service levels.
"If we don't have a plan to get those vacancies down we will need to reduce services for example that could mean radiographers may only be available for one surgical theatre at a time not two and it may mean we have to start thinking about reducing to only life preserving services on weekends or evenings."
Langlands said Taranaki Base was working at pace to manage the backlog and reduce wait times.
"We are using all our available public resources, working with regional and national colleagues, and engaging with private providers."
She said patients who experienced a change in symptoms while waiting for a result, were urged them to contact their GP, who could directly call a duty radiologist to speed up the reporting process..
"Health NZ was committed to growing training pathways for specialist imaging technologists and radiographers. We have established the National Radiology Network to improve and provide sustainable radiology services."
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