Dunstan Hospital's management is predicting hospital finances to be tighter this year than usual, but says services will hopefully be unaffected.
Central Otago Health Services Ltd (COHSL) manager Karyn Penno said 2017-18 funding from the Southern District Health Board (SDHB) had not yet been confirmed, but the level of funding indicated meant things would ''be really, really tight''.
The suggested funding was ''not as much as we'd like'', but should be similar to past years and hopefully finalised within about a month.
Ms Penno said other hospitals would also be asking for more SDHB funding than they were likely to get, and she sympathised with the SDHB for the Ministry of Health funding blunder that meant $5.7million of signalled ministry funding of the SDHB was withdrawn.
Ms Penno said although Dunstan Hospital finances were expected to be ''much tighter than in previous years'', hopefully no services would be cut.
''But as always we will be seeking different ways of doing things, and ways of working with people, to do things the best we possibly can.''
COHSL recorded modest surpluses for the past two years, but was predicting a $3000 surplus for 2017-18, the small amount indicating the detail used in finalising Dunstan's budget, Ms Penno said.
