Scott, whose predecessor Nick Hulme announced his retirement in October 2025, said staffing levels were now “in a good place”.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got 13,000 staff and generally we’ve got a very low vacancy rate, but there’s certain very specialist areas where we find it hard to recruit.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got to think about more creative ways to attract people but also train people locally.”<\/p>\n
Last winter, the rise in flu and other winter viruses after Christmas saw increased demand for services at Ipswich Hospital.<\/p>\n
Scott, however, believed it was “in a better place” this year due to the “amount of beds” it had and the “demands on it”.<\/p>\n
“There’s no doubt there’s pressure on our emergency services, but we’re opening more beds and making sure there’s more doctors on at the weekends and overnight.<\/p>\n
“We’re pushing really hard to make sure that we’ve got the right pathway back to home or a care home and for patients who are ready to be discharged.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scott, whose predecessor Nick Hulme announced his retirement in October 2025, said staffing levels were now “in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-628085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}