A Southland surgeon has been twice declined twice an emergency spot in MIQ, forcing his patients to either travel to other hospitals or delay surgery.
Dr Jim Faherty is the clinical director of the women's health unit at the Southland Hospital.
In August, he travelled to the United States to support his father who was given six months to live. His mother died earlier in 2021.
He hasn't been able to get back, causing trouble for his work back home.
"The consultants that are there [in Southland] don't do some of the surgeries that I am able to perform at Southland Hospital, and consultants that are working for locums don't typically cover elective surgery.
"Anybody who was requiring some of the surgeries that I do have had to either wait and have their surgeries postponed, or they've been required to go to other district health boards to have their surgeries performed away from their family and whānau and support."
Before he left, Dr Faherty spoke with his managers, telling them he should be eligible for emergency MIQ allocation.
But in the past month, he's been declined twice for emergency allocations, unsuccessfully appealed those decisions, and failed with the lottery system.
"If I'm not able to get back, we're going down to a 1.8 service to cover five FTE and it's difficult to keep the unit open, provide obstetric emergency coverage.
"Our midwives are already very taxed, there's a national shortage of midwives. So, everybody's sort of working to cover and it's quite difficult."
His absence will force the department he leads to will drop from five full time equivalent staff to just 1.8 this month.
His two applications and a subsequent appeal, were declined because he didn't meet the eligibility criteria under the critical health worker category.
"For the first time, in some aspect of ignorance, I applied on the 6th with the flight scheduled to leave the States on the 11th expecting a relatively rapid turnaround in approval, I received notification that my application had been declined on the 13th. Then on my second application I applied within 14 days and I found out the night before [the flight]."
When asked about the Dr Faherty's situation, Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins says he can't discuss and doesn't review individual cases.
"I am looking at the number of health workers that we are needing to get into the country at the moment," he said.
"I'm taking a good close look at that because there's several 100 potential health workers that are currently waiting to see whether there are things that we can do to support that, because ultimately we need them in our health workforce."
Dr Faherty is waiting to hear back about his third application - in this one, he's applied under the category allowing New Zealander's to visit a terminally ill family member.
The Southern DHB says they're very keen for Dr Faherty to return as soon as possible.
