National Health Board

Managers and doctors tried to work together to fix Dunedin Hospital but there was never enough money, Dunedin Hospital general medical staff chairman Dr David Perez says.

Some Wakatipu residents pay for treatment by private specialists in the area instead of visiting a public specialist in Dunedin or Invercargill, the panel invited to tackle the Wakatipu health crisis was told.

Decisions to ease problems with access to acute surgery at Dunedin Hospital should not be postponed because of the National Health Board review of hospital systems, Southern District Health Board member Richard Thomson says.

The outcome of the National Health Board team's assessment of Dunedin Hospital systems should be known by the middle of next month.

The National Health Board's entry into the Queenstown health services controversy has been greeted with confusion and disappointment by some in the community.

Health Minister Tony Ryall has welcomed the National Health Board's assessment of Dunedin Hospital systems announced this week.

A National Health Board team is being brought in to assess Dunedin Hospital systems, prompted by ongoing concerns about aspects of the hospital's performance.

District health boards have said they will carry out an extra 2600 elective procedures in the last three months of this financial year, 1400 short of the number requested.

The National Health Board has agreed to review the mental health "ring-fence" funding formula for the Southern District Health Board to find out whether an "aberration" is forcing it to overspend in the area, chairman Joe Butterfield says.

Details of the cost of revamping the South Island neurosurgery service are hazy, but it is not expected it will reach the $3.1 million extra it would have cost to set up a one-site model in Christchurch.

National health services improvement is not about tinkering with things or change for the sake of it, National Health Board director Chai Chuah says.