Health consultant Chris Fraser told the board meeitng in Invercargill the resort's residents expected the same level of services as people living in similar places.
"They don't expect more than their fair share, but they do expect their fair share," he told the Southland District Health Board yesterday.
He gave a brief present-ation to the board on the Queenstown health needs assessment his company FraserGroup Consulting recently completed for the Wakatipu Health Trust.
This looked at the needs of Queenstown in the areas of hospital services, outpatient services, emergency care and age-related residential care.
Queenstown had the fastest growing population of any place in New Zealand and there were some parallels with the situation which had occurred in South Auckland, where hospital services had not kept up with population growth.
By 2031, the number of Queenstown hospital beds needed to rise from 10 to 26 and residential services for the elderly needed to grow sixfold.
Board chairman Paul Menzies said the board was acutely aware of Queenstown's place as the pressure point of population growth in Otago Southland.
There was a "pretty bright future" in terms of what could be provided for the area.
Otago District Health Board chairman Errol Millar, who was present at the Invercargill meeting, said the debate would need to take place throughout the provinces on whether service provided in Queenstown was deficient or whether some other places were over-providing services.
Wakatipu Health Trust chairwoman Maria Cole emphasised the need for quality community-based solutions to the town's health services.
Speaking later in the meeting, boards' chief executive Brian Rousseau said one of the challenges for Queenstown would be deciding at what point there was sufficient critical mass to warrant specialists living in the area.
General practitioners had suggested this was at least 10 years away.
