The Waitaki Health Futures Project, which launched in mid-September with an online survey, closes this weekend.
As part of the project a series of face-to-face engagement sessions were held in Palmerston, Kurow, Oamaru and Hampden this week to enable residents to have a further say.
Health NZ Te Whatu Ora (HNZ) Otago community integration group manager Aroha Metcalf said the collated survey would be used in a workshop for "leaders" about "patient journeys", to help improve co-ordination and access to services.
Ms Metcalf said Oamaru Hospital and how it fitted into the public health system would be a priority in the discussion, given its transition to HNZ management in July.
Hearing about local experiences of the health system through the survey was "critically important", to ensure future Waitaki health service provision was clinically and financially sustainable. This is critical to add to or to balance the data and information that we can see in the system," Ms Metcalf said.
"The enrolled population, the number of GP consultations, the referrals, the number of people that go to ED (emergency department), the health status, the [makeup of the] population ... [would be taken into account] to give us an overall view," she said.
When the survey was launched last month, former Oamaru Hospital chief executive and Waitaki District Health Services Ltd board member Keith Marshall said how the data was pulled together to ensure real outcomes would be critical.
Ms Metcalf said it was important to note there was "no more money".
"This isn’t about identifying gaps for future investment ... It is not about reducing access to services. It’s about improving access to services."
Over 600 people had submitted answers to the online survey by Friday last week.
Face-to-face attendance was not high but attendees including community leaders had been "very well engaged".
"We may have been hoping for more people, but actually the people who come are providing a wealth of information, ... so that was really positive."
A Māori-focused session and hui were convened at Te Whare Koa Marae last week.
Ms Metcalf said the face-to-face engagement sessions took people through four key questions around what they did or did not like and their healthcare service needs, to help HNZ "identify priorities".
The answers were then appended to a communal board for other people to review and to put sticky dots on the ones they preferred.
Robyn Francis, of Oamaru, who attended a session, said the questions and the session interaction had been "really good", but the dot sticker system was confusing and unhelpful.
"The process gets lost for me here ... putting one dot to something that is very important to people.
"You are only given four dots, so it doesn’t seem enough."
Themes that came through from the face-to-face sessions included GP access and the inconvenience of multiple trips to Dunedin for specialist services.
