Doctor sticks to script to create world class hospital

This vision has been driven by Dr Colin Hutchison, who will be joined by local surgeons and local investors in creating a state of the art world class hospital. Kaweka Hospital’s stage 1 will open in July in Canning Road, Hastings and is expected to undertake 5000 operations a year. Stage 2 is also under construction and is set to open in December 2024.

What’s your career background?

I trained as a doctor in the UK initially starting my career in adult medicine. I then spent five years doing research in new technologies to treat people with kidney failure before moving to Hawke’s Bay to be the region’s specialist kidney doctor. From that I moved into public healthcare leadership with the Hawke’s Bay DHB, for five years including a year as the Chief Operating Officer.

What was the motivation for moving to New Zealand? For family reasons. I had spent my childhood in North America and although I enjoyed living and working in the UK, I knew that I wanted to give my own children broader life experiences and we found that Hawke’s Bay was very attractive with the beaches and access to the mountains. I came across a kidney doctor role at the Hawke’s Bay hospital online and the region looked really attractive, so we came to give it a go.

What was the inspiration for establishing a new hospital?

At the moment in New Zealand there is a lack of healthcare facilities and this causes challenges for senior doctors who want to provide really good care for their patients. Therefore as a group of senior doctors in Hawke’s Bay we thought outside of the box to solve the problem. Over the course of the last couple of years we have designed and raised money to build a new private hospital. Although the vision has been forming over many years, we really got going on the project in 2019.

 

First published by The Profit. Click here to read the full article.