The Southern District Health Board is likely to spend about $300,000 soon on new equipment for its neurosurgery service.
In the recent report from the South Island neurosurgery expert panel, the board's lack of equipment for image-guided surgery was criticised.
The panel said the board's hiring of this equipment on a case-by-case arrangement at a significant cost per case was not satisfactory in the long term.
In the report, released last week, the panel said the capital cost of the equipment would be about $600,000, but the board's chief operating officer for Otago, Vivian Blake, said it was expected the "Stealth" machine needed for image-guided surgery would cost about half that.
No other equipment is specified in the report.
The board has been hiring the equipment and last financial year this cost $98,200.
Mrs Blake said that figure included $90,000 for the lease, the remainder having been spent on associated disposable items.
The board had made a decision not to buy the Stealth while the decision on the service was pending, but now it was known the service would continue, a business case for the purchase would be put together as soon as possible.
The panel's report described the image-guided equipment as fundamental for a functioning neurosurgical service, and said the board would have to commit to buying it in order to attract surgeons.
In the background section of the report, the panel said until recently there had been little development of facilities, equipment or staffing which would indicate a long-term commitment to the service on the part of the Southern board and its predecessor.
"Indeed, it goes without saying that the collapse of an aged operating microscope while in use during 2009 is something that should never happen in a modern health facility and is something that is not designed to attract top-quality staff, nor to protect patients."
The panel noted the microscope had been replaced by an appropriately modern and high-quality one.
Mrs Blake said the microscope was replaced last November with funding of $128,600 from the Healthcare Otago Trust.
The 2003 microscope had not collapsed in a physical sense but stopped working during an operation, which was able to be successfully concluded without it.
Unfortunately, because the board's capital expenditure funds were very limited, equipment was often not replaced until it was past its use-by date, she said.
