Meanwhile the number of people waiting longer than the four-month treatment target has leapt 56.5% since December as an ongoing recruitment drive fails to find enough new specialists.
Information released by Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand (HNZ) Southern under the Official Information Act (OIA) recently showed $2,591,558 was spent outsourcing ophthalmology services to 37 providers in the year from December 11, 2022, ranging from individual specialists to organisations such as Mercy Hospital and Southern Cross Healthcare.
A total of $772,624 was spent on locum support.
HNZ Southern group director of operations Hamish Brown said there had been "a substantial rise in demand for ophthalmology services" in the last year, and the organisation was recruiting to meet the rise.
"While we are recruiting, we are outsourcing some specialised ophthalmology services, including oculoplastic procedures and ocular implants.
"There is a cost to this, but it also means that we can provide care to patients who need these specialised services.
"There are also a number of services which provide care close to home for those patients who are unable to travel."
Dunedin Hospital had 4.5 full-time-equivalent (FTE) ophthalmologists at present — the same figure as last November, he confirmed.
This still lags behind the budgeted figure of 6.85 FTE by one-third.
The boost was helping to meet the rising demand, Mr Brown said.
Staff were trained to "optimise the effectiveness" of their numbers as part of ongoing workforce development.
However, the number of people waiting for a procedure had climbed since last December, a comparison of data shows.
At the time there were 744 Southern patients waiting for a procedure, and the median wait time for this was 61 days.
Patients who were given a commitment to be treated should be seen within four months, but 177 people had been waiting longer than this.
By contrast, 822 people were awaiting a procedure last week, and the median wait time was 86 days — an increase of 40.1%, Mr Brown said.
The number of people waiting longer than four months was 277, a rise of 56.5% compared with December.
"We know that waiting for a procedure can be distressing and we sympathise with patients.
"We strongly encourage anyone who has new or changing symptoms to connect with their GP to check if their referral needs to be updated."
Fully staffing the service, which was the subject of a damning health and disability commissioner report in 2018 due to large waiting lists, has been an ongoing struggle — there have been vacancies of more than 1 FTE since 2020.
An average of 150 patients are seen by staff at the current hospital clinic each day, and the Filleul Surgical Centre — which opened last April — is also used by HNZ Southern.
Planning for how the new Dunedin hospital’s eye clinic service would function was ongoing, the Otago Daily Times reported last November.
Clinical space was set to be 7% larger, at about 700sq m compared with the current hospital’s 654sq m.
However, it is also set to share its space with other services.
