The "absurd notion" hospitals could be run with only clinical staff was usually expressed in letters to the editor and on talk-back radio, Mr Thomson told last week's hospital advisory committee meeting in Dunedin.
Any hospital was run by a team and to talk about one part of the team positively and call the other part an overhead was "incredibly insulting".
Patients needed to be fed, computers needed to be fixed and staff needed to be paid, he said.
About 76% of staff at Dunedin Hospital were clinical staff.
District health board guidelines say a ratio of 75% clinical to 25% non-clinical staff is an efficient mix.
Many of the hospital's so-called bureaucrats were clinically qualified, including the chief executive (pharmacy), chief nursing officer (nursing) and chief medical officer (surgeon), Mr Thomson said.
Sometimes, he got so used to people complaining about non-clinical staff it was easy to "just let it go past".
"We've got to stand up and be supportive to people in those roles."
However, that did not mean the hospital should stop looking at where money was spent unnecessarily, he said.
