2001 - 2012

Nigel Lever joined the staff in 2001, as did Scott Harding in 2003, Katherine Ferrier in 2006, Alexander Sasse in 2007 and Alejandro Jimenez in 2012.
In this most recent era, there have been further developments in interventional cardiology, with a significant number of patients presenting with developing myocardial infarction being treated on arrival with coronary angioplasty and stenting. 
There have been developments in cardiac imaging during this time including stress echo and cardiac MRI.
Cardioverter defibrillators were first implanted at Wellington Hospital in 2001 and numbers implanted each year have been increasing since.
Although there had been some dabbling in electrophysiologic studies in earlier times, this period saw the return of Nigel Lever to the team, fully-trained in cardiac electrophysiology and ablation techniques.  Nigel put his skills into practice once all the necessary equipment was installed.
The service fell into abeyance when Nigel departed for Auckland in 2006, but fortunately Alejandro Jiminez joined the staff in 2012 and the service is up and running again.

With the move to the new Regional Hospital came a 'rationalisation' of staffing in a number of areas.   In the out-patient area, the Clinical Measurement Unit shares reception and administration functions with Neurology and other services.  The in-patient area sees Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery integrated into one ward with a single nurse manager and multi-skilled nursing staff.   Finally, the Cath Labs are co-located with other non-cardiac radiology procedure labs and there is a sharing of nursing and radiographer staff.