However, it is still not clear how much the extra operations will cost or precisely where the money is coming from.
A month after the Otago Daily Times put questions to Minister of Health Tony Ryall and the National Health Board on the issue, which were all then subjected to their formal Official Information Act process, Mr Ryall has replied that the extra funding would come from "under spend in other areas and contingencies".
"The actual amount would be determined once we have looked at the number of type of procedures to be done and weighed this up against the under spend."
Asked if the need for the extra surgery was weighed up against other possible health expenditure, Mr Ryall said no services would be affected by the "re-prioritisation".
Asked what decision-making process was followed, he repeated the re-prioritisation answer.
In late March, all district health boards, apart from Canterbury, were given an "indicative share" of 4000 procedures which the national board said might be required to cover all the surgery which would have been done in Christchurch to the end of June, despite Canterbury indicating the shortfall would be fewer than 1000 cases.
North Island boards were asked to concentrate on providing extra surgery to their own populations, giving priority to those who had waited more than six months.
Asked whether this move had more to do with addressing some of the concerns raised in the draft Auditor-general's report about waiting times for surgery, Mr Ryall said reduced waiting times was a Government priority.
The National Health Board, recognising that boards would be providing more surgery, determined it was most appropriate to "target the extra surgery at people who had been waiting longer than six months", he said.
A list of the number of procedures sought from the various boards shows that Southern, Counties Manakau and Northland were expected to do the most - 400 each.
Southern advised it could only take on 150 extras at Southland Hospital.
No breakdown of the number of operations the individual boards settled on was given in the information released by Mr Ryall.
Tairawhiti and the West Coast boards were asked to do the least, at 20 procedures each.
