Some of the $8 million in additional weight-loss funding will be used for skin-fold surgery, National Health Board electives manager Clare Perry says.
Last year, district health boards were granted an extra $8 million over four years for 300 extra weight-loss operations. The initiative allowed the Southern DHB to perform up to 27 operations this financial year, rather than a maximum of 15. Last year, Southern did not carry out additional operations, because of a lack of capacity.
Ms Perry said because of the time lag in patients requiring skin-fold surgery after a weight-loss operation, a "prioritisation tool" was being developed to allocate skin-fold surgeries in 2013-14.
"The ministry held discussions with specialists in several DHBs and we were advised that follow-up plastic surgery should not be considered until two years post-operatively."
Southern DHB funding and finance general manager Robert Mackway-Jones said anecdotally there was low demand for plastic surgery after weight-loss surgery.
However, it was too early to anticipate demand, he said.
