Surgery at the Leeton District Hospital in the New South Wales Riverina has been suspended for three months with no guarantee it will resume.

The Greater Southern Area Health Service says it has temporarily suspended surgery at Leeton District Hospital from today to identify possible changes to surgical services to ensure they are appropriate.

When asked if Leeton could lose local surgery altogether, the director of medical services Doctor Joe McGirr said he could not pre-empt the outcome.

“It’s difficult to pre-empt the process that we’re going through, but we did indicate to the doctors that we would be working very closely with them,” he said

“They emphasised to us how important the theatre was for the services to the community, for services for obstetrics and obviously for their own recruiting and retaining doctors for the community and we’re very acutely aware of that so we need to address that concern.

“There are a range of issues that have been identified. A couple for example include the fact that at the moment there’s only one entry and exit to the theatre and that’s actually a fire issue. There’s also an issue with the size of the recovery room.”

The closure means Leeton residents will have to travel to Narrandera or Griffith for surgery for the next three months.

Dr McGirr says obstetrics services will continue at Leeton District Hospital for low-risk patients.

“We will make arrangements for patients who are in a high-risk category because there won’t be the availability of caesarean section cover at Leeton during this time, we’ll make arrangements for them to be referred to Griffith Hospital or indeed Narrandera hospital.”

The Leeton Shire Council says the decision to close the theatre came as a shock but it now agrees the closure is necessary.

The Mayor Paul Maytom says council received a briefing from the health service last week.

He expects the training and upgrade to improve health services for Leeton residents in future.

“I suppose the good thing about this is that we can be then satisfied after the three months or beyond – it may take longer than three months for the theatre to be upgraded – we’ll have the appropriate skills and facilities to suit our needs if we have that emergency happen in our town,” he said.

“There’s two aspects of it, one is the theatre itself needs an upgrade and the other one is that because I understand there’s not a lot of theatre or operations that are being done at Leeton hospital they need to up-skill the theatre nursing staff from Leeton hospital by taking them to Griffith or Narrandera Hospital.”