The Southern District Health Board was one of three boards which did not carry out any of the extra surgery sought by the National Health Board in the last quarter of the financial year.
In a controversial move in March, boards around the country were asked by the NHB to carry out an extra 4000 procedures in the last three months of the year.
The NHB advised at the time that up to 4000 operations might not be delivered as a result of the Christchurch earthquake, although that number was later described as several thousand too high.
Those boards who were not able to offer services to Canterbury people were asked to concentrate on providing extra surgery to their own populations, giving priority to those who had waited more than six months.
The boards eventually agreed to deliver 2610 extra procedures, but figures released to the Otago Daily Times show the final number was 204 short of this target.
The Southern District Health Board, which had hoped to do an extra 150 operations at Southland Hospital in Invercargill, did not complete any of them. The NHB originally suggested its share should be 400 extras, along with Counties Manukau and Northland.
However, it did, along with all other district health boards except Canterbury, meet its annual target for increased access to elective surgery.
(That target was set much earlier during the annual plan process).
The Waikato District Health Board did not do any of its planned extra 300 operations in the final three months, or Nelson-Marlborough its 200.
A total of eight boards did not complete the number of extra operations planned, but this was offset to some degree by other boards exceeding their targets.
Among them were Capital and Coast which completed 239 extra operations in the quarter when it had planned no extras and Counties Manukau which did 137 more procedures than the 400 it estimated it could do.
The extra surgery cost $6.3 million, but no details on the types of surgery provided were available.
NHB deputy director Michael Hundleby said the money had come from Vote Health.
"Other services were not affected, as this amount became available as a result of lower than forecast delivery of demand driven services," he said.
