Southern District Health Board is one organisation and its major hospitals should have common systems for dealing with complaints, chairman Joe Butterfield says.
At this month's hospitals' advisory committee meeting in Invercargill, he said he did not want details but wanted results on the matter.
Chief nursing and midwifery officer Leanne Samuel said it was a complex issue as it involved Southland's secondary base hospital and Dunedin's tertiary hospital, with different models of care and approaches.
Joe Butterfield: "I've heard that story before."
Ms Samuel: "It's the truth."
Mr Butterfield said it was not satisfactory to have two different systems in a merged organisation.
He said he was not "worried about who does what", but was concerned that they were different and there needed to be a deadline set for when changes would occur.
His comments arose when the committee was considering the report of Otago chief medical officer Richard Bunton relating to the Dunedin complaints review committee.
The committee had raised the issue that although it was nearly a year since the merger of the two boards there seemed to be no plans to standardise processes between the two sites.
Regarding the complaints review committee, it was noted both sites had different ways of handing complaints.
Southland chief operating officer Lexie O'Shea said two people were working on how to bring more uniformity into the quality systems of the board, something expected to take six months.
She indicated there would be a report before Christmas.
