Patients are to be told they will be moved quickly through hospital services if they have a GP's letter, rather than turning up at southern emergency departments unannounced.
Labour has called for an independent inquiry into the use of surgical mesh because of the harm it has caused patients.
Southern patients suffering complications from surgical mesh will be represented at Parliament's health select committee today in Wellington, where advocates will urge the Government to launch an independent inquiry.
Tarras School pupil Jemmimah McCombe-Rae (10), of Tarras, is all concentration as she takes on Ben Paku (10), of George Street Normal School, in the second round of the Otago Southland primary intermediate interschool team chess championship in Dunedin on Saturday.
A University of Otago dietitian who helped develop a new health star food rating system is defending the scheme from criticism, and says it is not designed to resolve the ''fat sugar debacle''.
Recent outbreaks of norovirus in southern rest-homes and hospitals have prompted Public Health South to call for the rapid development of a surveillance system.
Establishing a link between fracking and earthquakes was ''difficult'', but circumstantial evidence pointed to there being one, Dr Andreas Lindstrom told an audience on Saturday at the Otago Foreign Policy School.
It will be difficult to shift the breast-screening age, even if the science does not support screening women under 50, Dunedin breast cancer survivor Dr Sue Walthert says.
The New Zealand Aged Care Association is trying to put sector funding on the political agenda in its election campaign launched today.
An elderly man discharged from Dunedin Hospital last week says the lack of follow-up support for him at home is ''crazy''.
The Southern District Health Board has rejigged top staff to allow two senior executives to focus solely on cost reduction.
The Southern District Health Board is undertaking a wide-reaching planning exercise for the next decade, which will be used to help plan the Dunedin Hospital rebuild.
The home support provider that axed an autism support programme at short notice had to be ''hard-nosed'' because of tight finances, Access board chairman John Ayling says.
The University of Otago has rejected claims from a member of Parliament its general election media project has been taken over by the National Party.
Disgraced Act MP John Banks is an unlikely ''working class hero'' for leaving the Government without the numbers to pass controversial employment law, senior doctors' union executive director Ian Powell says.
A Dunedin holiday programme for autistic and other special needs children is being axed and a Dunedin mother is furious the provider gave just four weeks' notice.
Promising young Mosgiel dancer Rebecca Murray is about to take a bold step.
The Government-established entity tasked with awarding New Zealand hospital food contracts to a sole provider is refusing to say why progress appears to be lacking.
Noise control, winter weather, and not spending too much on an old building are among challenges in the patch-up of Dunedin Hospital's leaking clinical services building.
A single incorrect digit entered into a computer system caused the massive IT crash in southern hospitals in February, a report from the Southern District Health Board says.
