The gastroenterology department officially opened its new ward space yesterday, a long-awaited redevelopment carried out with the Southern District Health Board entering the national bowel cancer screening programme in mind.
However, Dunedin Hospital is soon to be rebuilt, and by 2026 at the latest gastroenterology will have moved from its sparkling new eighth floor home to new premises just down the road.
''We love how it is now, but it's not how we would have done it if we weren't constrained by being on the eighth floor of a public hospital,'' Dr Hill said.
''The pillars which hold up the building, they can't be moved ... This has turned out better than I thought it would and the staff are really enjoying it, but we've already started work designing the new gastroenterology space.
''Building in a brand new space will hopefully give us an extra room, and the flow will be be different ... We should be able to achieve complete separation of pre and post procedure spaces,'' he said.
''There is scope for shared space as well ... Lots of front-end, reception stuff is similar and I think a lot of those things will be shared.''
''Back of house'' services were other things which could be well-positioned to be shared between departments.
In the new department, waiting and interview rooms are now private spaces - formerly patients received their reports in a busy corridor - and post-operative patients are no longer wheeled past people waiting for their operations.
In a much larger space than the old department, beds are now be stationed the recommended 2.5m apart to minimise the chance of infection, and they can all be screened off.
The area where equipment is cleaned is next to the storage areas with the machines in the dividing wall, so cleaned equipment can be taken out in a clean space - meeting recently introduced updated hygiene standards.
Placement of the future gastroenterology department within the new hospital complex would be important, Dr Hill said.
Rather than having patients having to go to the eighth floor, a department with a high volume of low risk procedures such as gastroenterology should be easily accessible, he said.
