About 3500 newborn babies across the southern region are expected to have free hearing screening each year in a nationwide programme which began in Otago and Southland last month.
Southern District Health Board chief executive Brian Rousseau has begun the process of determining who among his staff want to meet the South Island neurosurgical services expert panel when it comes south at the end of the month.
The panel on South Island neurosurgical services will visit Dunedin, Christchurch and Invercargill at the end of the month.
Dunedin Hospital emergency specialists have grave concerns more patients will suffer long-term serious disability without acute neurosurgery at the hospital, acting clinical leader of the emergency department Dr Tim Kerruish says.
Dunedin Hospital is turning to the virtual world for clues on how best to move patients faster through its emergency department.
I say! Although I am happy not to have taken part in the jolly japes which may go with wearing a Girl Guide uniform, I was almost tempted to shout "Rather!" about the latest campaign of the United Kingdom lot.
The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons will not elaborate on its claim last weekend that it would be better for patients if the South Island's six neurosurgeons were based in one place.
Those who want to save neurosurgery in Dunedin should not let up now, intensive care nurse Pam Adams says.
Doubt about the power of the Director-general of Health to impose a final decision in the South Island neurosurgery dispute has been raised by Southern District Health Board member Richard Thomson.
Extra patients travelling to Christchurch for neurosurgery could put pressure on ambulance resources, St John southern region operations manager Doug Third says.
The Ministry of Health says it had no deliberate intention to mislead or misinform anyone when it incorrectly advised the Otago Daily Times last week it had not received any feedback on the make-up of the panel to review neurosurgery services.
The much-anticipated terms of reference for the South Island neurosurgical service expert panel released yesterday do not spell out how the panel will carry out its work.
In what several speakers described as an unprecedented display of southern unity, Otago and Southland local body representatives joined about 1000 people in the Dunedin Town Hall last night to demand neurosurgery services be retained in Dunedin.
Moves to ban all smoking on hospital premises faltered yesterday when the Southern District Health Board voted against smoke-free mental health services.
Former Otago District Health Board chairman Richard Thomson has announced he will be seeking re-election to the Southern District Health Board this year.
Anne Kolbe, chairwoman of the panel advising the Director-general of Health on neurosurgery services in the South, has spent several hours in preliminary discussions with representatives of the Southern District Health Board and the University of Otago's faculty of medicine.
The make-up of the panel to advise Director-general of Health Stephen McKernan about future neurosurgery services in the South announced this month differs markedly from what was proposed in June.
Action to support retaining neurosurgery services in Dunedin has been a family affair for Bayfield High School staff member Viv Hepburn and her two daughters at the school.
Any removal of neurosurgery from Dunedin Hospital has the potential to develop into the "death of tertiary services by a thousand cuts", Dunedin School of Medicine dean Dr John Adams says.
An appeal to Health Minister Tony Ryall and his ministry to show "statesman-like leadership" to resolve the "damaging" neurosurgery impasse has been issued by Dunedin Hospital senior medical staff.
