Middlemore Hospital staffing crisis: patients wait weeks for X-rays, CT scans

In addition to recent reports about a maternity services crisis at Middlemore Hospital, Counties Manukau DHB is also in the middle of the worst Medical Imaging Technologist (MIT) staffing crisis the DHB has ever faced, sparking concerns that potentially life-saving diagnoses will be delayed.

There is currently a staffing shortfall of 19 full-time MITs at the DHB, which is a vacancy rate of over 27%. The DHB struggles to recruit and retain newly qualified staff who are typically drawn to the better pay and work-life balance offered to MITs overseas and in the private sector. Others are leaving behind the pressure and high costs of living and working in Auckland for work in the regions.

Middlemore Hospital is the largest trauma centre in Australasia. The DHB has therefore prioritised staffing towards acute patients, cutting out-patient examinations by up to 95%. However, as a result, patients who have been referred by GPs for X-rays or CT scans are now faced with long waits.

APEX Advocate, Luke Coxon, says: “Timely X-ray and CT scans are essential to attaining early and potentially life-saving diagnoses, including detecting the early stages of cancer.”

“If the MIT workforce crisis is not fixed, it is only a matter of time until patients miss their window of opportunity for life-saving treatment because they’re stuck on a waitlist for diagnostic scans.”

The situation at Counties Manukau is a glaring symptom of a mounting national MIT workforce crisis, with multiple DHBs nation-wide facing critical levels of MIT understaffing.

ABOUT MEDICAL IMAGING TECHNOLOGISTS

Medical Imaging Technologists (MITs, previously known as Medical Radiation Technologists, or MRTs) are qualified healthcare professionals who use ionising radiation or magnetic fields to produce diagnostic images of the body to help doctors diagnose and treat illness and injury.

MITs practice in plain films (X-ray), computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), mammography, angiography, or nuclear medicine (SPECT and PET) and around 80% of all hospital patients will be imaged by an MIT during the course of their diagnosis and treatment.