It was no surprise Dunedin Hospital operating theatre staff did not want to work evenings or weekends, but "no other high-tech endeavour" would run equipment for such limited hours, an Otago District Health Board member says.
Hospital advisory committee chairman Richard Thomson said given the direction health was heading, it would become "increasingly difficult to justify to the public that we have expensive equipment that we choose not to use, except in emergencies, more than 45 hours a week".
The board has been looking at ways to improve efficiencies in its operating theatres to meet a Government target of improving access to elective surgery.
Emergency medicine and surgery group manager Dr Colleen Coop told the committee at this week's meeting that staff had "quite strongly" said they did not want to work on evenings or weekend lists.
Elective surgery lists are done between 8am and 4.30pm.
Mr Thomson said while he did not want to "challenge the unchallengeable", the board needed to get more out of what it had.
"I suspect we are going to have to be open down the track to things being done differently."
One example might be high-tech diagnostic equipment which was being used full time between 8am and 4pm.
If access to a machine was creating delays in getting patients to theatre, it could come down to a choice of running the machine with shift work, or buying another machine - which was increasingly not an option.
