The Queenstown Health Needs Assessment commissioned by the Wakatipu Health Trust was released at a public meeting in Queenstown last night.
The assessment,by FraserGroup Consulting Ltd, analysed hospital services, emergency care and aged residential care in the Queenstown area to gauge equity and accessibility for Queenstown residents to 2031.
Writer Chris Fraser is a former Otago District Health Board regional planning and funding manager.
His report says there is insufficient capacity in Queenstown to provide an "equitable level of access" to locally delivered hospital services for residents and visitors.
It says three more hospital beds are needed immediately and 13 more by 2031.
"People living in Queenstown currently have low access rates to the health services examined in this report, hospital inpatient services and age-related residential care in particular," it says.
Queenstown's hospital will need up to 90% of Southland District Health Board's funding for satellite hospitals over the next 22 years.
By 2031, the population in Queenstown is projected to grow by 55%, twice New Zealand growth rate.
In that same period, the over-75 population in Queenstown is projected to grow by 240%.
"A significant improvement in access to local hospital and age-related services will be required in Queenstown to meet the challenges of, firstly, providing Queenstown people with equitable access to these services and, secondly, keeping pace with the projected increase in demand for them generated by population and visitor growth," it says.
More mothers are giving birth outside the district and elderly residents will not have the same choices as residents in other areas serviced by satellite hospitals and will have to move to access services, it says.
"This outcome is inconsistent with the Otago and Southland DHBs' stated aim to ensure health services are equitable, accessible, integrated and sustainable for the population across the regions."
Lakes District Hospital had the highest rate of transferring patients to other hospitals in Otago and Southland in 2006-07 and 2007-08, significantly affecting patients and their families.
Lakes District Hospital was "a hospital that is not treating patients for as much of the continuum of care as other hospitals in the cohort but instead transferring complex cases out of Queenstown".
Queenstown would need up to 27 more aged care beds if its care level was equal to that of Waitaki, Clutha and Central Otago.
Wakatipu Health Trust spokeswoman Maria Cole said the trust was seeking fair and transparent funding for the hospital services at Frankton, and community governance of the hospital, consistent with other hospitals in the South Island.
The trust also presented the findings to medical practitioners at a meeting on Wednesday.
