Emergency care for people in remote areas of Otago and Southland could be compromised if neurosurgery is offered only from Christchurch, Dunedin-based National list MP Michael Woodhouse says.
He and former Labour health minister, Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson, yesterday both spoke out strongly in favour of the Otago and Southland district health boards' bid to retain neurosurgery in Dunedin.
Mr Woodhouse, a former chief executive of Mercy Hospital in Dunedin, said he would not want to have a car crash in Te Anau at the best of times, but if neurosurgery was only offered in Christchurch "you've got to question whether people's prognosis would be compromised".
The desirable time between the occurrence of trauma to hospital treatment, the "golden hour" would become two or three hours if patients had to be flown to Christchurch.
Neurosurgery services in the South are under review, with South Island boards agreeing there should be a regional service employing six neurosurgeons, but unable to agree on whether all services should be offered on one site or whether the services should be spread across two sites.
Last Friday board representatives failed to reach consensus on this issue and a meeting will be held in Dunedin to discuss it further.
Details of the meeting date and who is likely to attend have not yet been made available.
Otago and Southland favour the two-site model which would have two of the neurosurgeons resident in Otago.
Mr Hodgson said he had deliberately stayed away from public comment on the issue until now, believing that common sense would prevail, but the recent newspaper coverage made him "wonder whether we're dealing with intransigence among some Canterbury-based senior doctors".
While he was pleased with the idea of one service rather than the existing two, locating all six neurosurgeons in Christchurch was "profoundly stupid".
As well as affecting people's reasonable access to neurosurgery, a Christchurch-only service would affect the Dunedin school of medicine, a body which "must be part of health-service configuration".
Mr Woodhouse said the reasons he supported the model with two neurosurgeons in Dunedin were geographical and educational.
He had made his feelings known to Health Minister Tony Ryall, he said.
Otago and Southland were too large to have such a service offered only from Christchurch and Dunedin had to retain its status as the pre-eminent provider of medical training.
The absence of neurosurgery in Dunedin would significantly undermine Dunedin Hospital's teaching capability.
In recent years, there had been difficulty attracting neurosurgeons to Dunedin, and uncertainties about the future of the service exacerbated that.
Mr Woodhouse said he had been involved with discussions on the future of the service back in 1995.
The risks associated with having the whole island covered from Christchurch was one which nobody was prepared to take then, and "frankly, I don't believe that's changed".
