The Wakatipu Health Trust has received overwhelming support for its battle for more funding and a better range of services for Lakes District Hospital in a "sobering" public online survey.
Spokes-woman Maria Cole said Lakes District Hospital was an essential service in the community.
The trust's survey asked questions about whether the current model was working properly and whether the community should have more direct influence on the range of services available at the hospital.
"The staggering number of responses [805] within four weeks indicates how raw the hospital issue is for so many in our community."
She said a large number of people took advantage of the comments section to describe their own experience with the hospital service in Queenstown.
"Some of the experiences have been simply tragic and these should never be downplayed," she said.
"But what surprised me was the disruption to so many lives that is being caused by residents having to travel to Invercargill and beyond for relatively straightforward tests and procedures."
While the anecdotal results of the survey were sobering, she said the trust wanted to make sure they could be backed up by the data in a comparison with the services other regional towns around the country were receiving.
The trust commissioned formal needs assessments for Queenstown which provided evidence for many of the anecdotally reported shortcomings in the public health service, Mrs Cole said.
The trust wanted fair and transparent funding for Lakes Hospital and community governance like all the other hospitals in the region, she said.
"We are the stakeholders and the hospital exists for our benefit. We pay for it through our taxes.
"The range of services and care our hospital can provide is governed by the funding it receives. This is set by the DHB based in Invercargill. They control the spending, they own our hospital and they control what services will be delivered to us," she said.
