News

Local residents to benefit from state of the art theatres

Friday , 8 January 2016 by Aimee Bourke

Southern Cross’ North Harbour Hospital on Wairau Road is expanding for the fourth time in its 24 year history – to keep pace with resident demand for elective surgery.

In 1991, Southern Cross opened with four operating theatres, servicing 3,000 patients a year. The Hospital now accommodates 90 specialists across eight theatres and cares for 7,000 patients annually.

Further benefiting local patients, new post-operative patient recovery facilities and two state of the art theatres are in the process of being added.

One of these is a hybrid theatre, equipped with advanced medical imaging devices, allowing pre and post-operative imaging to be done in theatre instead of having to move patients between rooms. Hybrid theatres also allow treatments from relatively low risk procedures right through to open surgery to be performed in the same place.

Jeanette Kini, North Harbour Campus Hospital Manager, says the redevelopments further cement Southern Cross’ commitment to delivering outstanding service to the community.

“The investment we’re making will allow us to expand the range of surgical specialities we can offer to patients and allow medical specialists already on the campus to offer more complex spinal, orthopaedic and upper gastrointestinal surgery,” she says.

“We’re very excited about the benefits of the hybrid theatre. Our hybrid theatre will function as a conventional operating theatre with the benefit of state of the art imaging, usually only found in radiology facilities. With the movement towards minimally-invasive surgery aimed at reduced pain, trauma, blood loss and recovery time, this is a welcome development to our service offering.”

The current phase of redevelopment is scheduled to finish no sooner than July 2016.