There are also about another 200 who are due or overdue for routine follow-up colonoscopies following surgery.
In a newsletter, general practice liaison officer Dr Anne Worsnop said extra colonoscopy sessions would be undertaken and some patients would be offered CT colonography at Otago Radiology, at no cost to the patient.
Board management was not prepared to say what it would pay for the CT procedure. Private patients pay $655.
The funding Dunedin Hospital receives for its colonoscopies is based on a national purchasing price of $988.
Patients who are found to have polyps in their bowel which need to be removed will still require a colonoscopy.
Dr Worsnop described the procedure as superior to a barium enema and an acceptable alternative for selected patients.
It could help to manage the waiting list by "pre-screening" those patients with a low or intermediate risk - those with bowel symptoms or who required surveillance.
It was also better tolerated in those who were very frail.
It was, however, not considered to be the first line of investigation for people with a positive faecal occult blood test. Those people needed colonoscopy, she said.
Dunedin Hospital, in future, would offer CT colonography and it was likely barium enemas would be phased out, Dr Worsnop said.
Reports before the hospitals' advisory committee have been showing for some months that the planned elective colonoscopy rate was not being met and at the end of February the hospital was 89 short of the 529 planned.
The hospital plan was for 800 elective colonoscopies this financial year.
• Access to colonoscopies at Dunedin Hospital has been controversial in recent years.
A group of general practitioners complained in 2009 that their patients were being put at risk, prompting an independent audit of some referrals.
Following that, the number of planned elective colonoscopies was increased, but staffing was not.
Plans to revamp the cramped endoscopy suite are dependent on being able to find suitable space for University of Otago staff who would be displaced.
