Whanganui District Health Board to try to retrofit records department into chemotherapy and transfusion unit

Whanganui DHB chief executive Andrew McKinnon said the clinical records department was identified as the best option to date for the new unit. Photo / Bevan Conley

Work is under way to clear a space inside Whanganui Hospital that could be redeveloped into the city's proposed chemotherapy and transfusion unit.

The unit, which has been in the works since 2017, has also expanded to include endoscopy and renal services.

But Whanganui DHB's acting chief executive is not willing to offer any timelines as to when the unit could be up and running.

In February 2020 the Government announced $800,000 of funding for the DHB to establish the unit on the Whanganui Hospital campus.

The DHB has started clearing Clinical Records to see if that space could be converted into a chemotherapy and transfusion unit. Photo / Supplied

The unit would mean a lot less travel for about Whanganui patients, who according to a 2019 DHB document made up 19 per cent, or 70 appointments a month, of all patients receiving chemotherapy at the Regional Cancer Treatment Service at Palmerston North Hospital.

It would not mean all of those patients could be seen in Whanganui - only those considered 'clinically low risk', which was about 57 patients a year in 2019.

Whanganui DHB acting chief executive Andrew McKinnon said the clinical records department - located centrally on Whanganui Hospital campus - was identified as the best option to date.

He said work was under way to relocate the department before it could be converted into a space to carry out chemotherapy, transfusion as well as endoscopy and renal services.

"These things go a little slower than we'd all like," he said.

It was "tricky to fit everything we want to fit in" without compromising those services, he said.

"I don't want to build something today ... that's not going to be fit for purpose [later]."

Whanganui DHB's acting chief executive Andrew McKinnon is not willing to offer any timelines as to when the chemotherapy and transfusion unit could be up and running. Photo / Bevan Conley

According to documents obtained by the Chronicle under the Official Information Act, an infusion therapy project group in late 2019 proposed several different ways of having the services at Whanganui Hospital.

Their preferred idea was a prefabricated unit built on the hospital campus because it would be faster than refurbishing a part of the existing building as well as being purpose-built.

McKinnon said the prefabricated building idea did not work out because physicians were nervous that if a patient had a bad reaction to chemotherapy or infusion treatments they would not be able to get them to the emergency department quickly enough.

"We talked about this and the doctors, the clinical specialists would prefer it within the buildings rather than away from campus in a prefab."

Their second preference was an existing space within Whanganui Hospital and that led to choosing the clinical records space to be converted.

But McKinnon said it was not guaranteed that space would work.

"Remember that clinical records space is an option for it - as we go through this process we might find it doesn't fit. And we'd have to free up another space."

The services have always been expected to be managed by MidCentral DHB, but McKinnon said the difference between DHBs would not matter once they all became Health NZ on July 1.

There was no signal the plans for the chemotherapy and infusion unit could be shelved in the national amalgamation of DHBs, he said.

The $800,000 given to the DHB to build the unit had not yet been drawn down and was still available, McKinnon said.

While it had been a long wait since the announcement Whanganui would get its own chemotherapy and transfusion unit in February 2020, McKinnon said the DHB was doing its best.

"[I] completely understand their frustration - we are trying to move as quickly as we can.

"It is not a quick build. It will take some time and we will try to get it to our community as quickly as we can."

He could not commit to any timelines for people to expect the unit to be up and running.

"You don't want to give an impression that something is going to happen by a certain date and something comes out of left field.

"I don't control all the variables that are at play."

In November last year, the DHB said it identified other issues that needed addressing at clinical records and the endoscopy clinic.

It may be better "to provide [a] single facility upgrade that addresses all in a sustainable way," the DHB said in its timeline of work on the chemotherapy and transfusion unit.

That led to planning in the first half of this year for the new unit to be a single day stay facility covering infusion, endoscopy and dialysis services.

"The more we dug into it in terms of providing infusion services [and] then to try to identify clinical space to put it in, the more it became clear we had other needs to incorporate into any development we did."

They were still working on a new location for clinical records, McKinnon said.