The Southern Primary Health Organisation wants more money from the Southern District Health Board.
The request was discussed at the board's recent meeting, in the public-excluded session.
A paper released by DHB chief executive Brian Rousseau after the meeting said the super-sized Otago and Southland PHO wanted funding to employ extra staff for its "performance plan".
"Normally, this would be part of the PHO management fee. However, the PHO advise they have insufficient funds to manage this," the paper said.
The organisations were in talks over the request.
Southern DHB funding and finance general manager Robert Mackway-Jones said when contacted the PHO sought one-off extra funding to supplement its management fee for 2011-12 of just under $1.8 million.
"We are looking to support the PHO with its performance management programme. Any support provided will need to become ... funded by the PHO after the initial extra assistance."
When contacted, Southern PHO chief executive Ian Macara said the extra funding would support 1.5 full-time equivalent clinical staff and a 0.5 full-time worker in each of the Dunedin, Alexandra, and Invercargill offices.
The staff would work with community GPs to improve the South's performance in high priority areas, such as cervical cancer screening, breast-screening, cardiovascular risk assessment and diabetes detection.
