People with a medical emergency in Oamaru tonight and tomorrow night might face a 1.5-hour journey to an emergency department.
Oamaru hospital's ED will be closed overnight due to doctor shortages and it's not the first time it's happened in recent months.
Waitaki District Health Services chief executive Keith Marshall said they’ve found themselves unable to fill some roster shifts for doctors.
“We did quite a bit of rearranging internally around the hospital. We decided the best outcome out of a bad situation was to close the ED on Saturday night and Sunday night,” he said.
The weekend closure comes after the emergency department also closed for a night in late June and again on July 31.
It's causing some anxiety in the town.
“I’ve been very lucky with health but I’ve got a pacemaker – you don't know what's going to happen. I’m 86 so it would be handy if it was there,” one local told 1News.
“It's definitely not ideal. Health is a basic right,” another said.
“I think it's appalling. Are we living in a third world country or something?” a local woman added.
The hospital is an independent facility which has a funding contract with Te Whatu Ora.
“It's just incredibly unbelievable that there isn't a single doctor that could be found anywhere in the system to avoid our closure,” Marshall said.
Te Whatu Ora said it's working closely with the management team to provide support and minimise disruptions.
It says when the emergency department closed for the night in June, two patients were taken to Timaru Hospital by ambulance.
Doctor shortages are a worldwide issue, but Accent Health Recruitment's Prudence Thomson said she has seen plenty of interest and there is some relief coming later in the year.
“We've got two doctors going to Oamaru and we've got two going to Dunedin, urgent care physicians and their absolutely brilliant skills,” she said.
Oamaru locals in need of urgent care have been advised to contact the on-call general practitioner, or call 111.
St John Ambulance has an extra crew on standby.
“There's an amazing group of people in here doing an absolutely stunning job. We don't want to be doing this. The fundamental bottom line is this has to work for people but at the end of the day, we can't run an ED without a doctor,” Marshall said.
Te Whatu Ora is signalling potential roster gaps later this month and in early September.
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