Eileen Goodwin

Visits to Toitu Otago Settlers Museum had topped 140,000 since it reopened in December, museum director Linda Wigley told the museum board at its meeting yesterday.

Otago and Southland rate highly in a national ranking of the safest places to be if you need healthcare.

Patient safety will be the first focus of a Southern District Health Board project that aims to cut costs while improving services.

The Southern District Health Board has released figures showing $17,156 of expenses relating to the first six months of the secondment of a senior Wellington health manager to assist the southern board's surgical department.

Thirty-nine years as a Musselburgh GP has come to a close for Dr Ian Macbeth.

The new head of Dunedin Hospital's emergency department (ED) says a lack of adequate staff over the past couple of years left her ''terrified'' at times that a patient would die.

Departing health executive Robert Mackway-Jones says he has not decided whether to seek another role in the health sector when he leaves the Southern District Health Board.

The Southern District Health Board says it is able to accommodate a French-built ventilation unit made to the wrong specifications for its new operating theatre in Dunedin Hospital.

The Southern District Health Board has said it would charge more than $2200 to look through emails and letters between it and six home-based support providers in order to decide whether they could be released.

An alliance with Wellington's neurosurgery department might be needed to ensure the future of the South Island neurosurgical service through providing a big enough population base for sub-specialisation, former governance board chairman Prof Andrew Kaye says in the service's annual report.