The bulk of information gathering for the assessment of Dunedin Hospital systems by a National Health Board has been completed, but some aspects are still under scrutiny.
Team leader, the national board's service improvement manager, Jill Lane, said yesterday because of the range of things which the group was looking at it was unlikely the report would be finished by the end of next week.
The team was aiming to have the first draft, for discussion with the Southern District Health Board, completed by mid-July.
Ms Lane said she would be visiting Southland Hospital, in Invercargill, on Monday.
Although the assessment involved Dunedin Hospital, it was important to understand the context of the two hospitals within the Southern District Health Board.
She was not prepared to elaborate about particular areas being explored, saying that the process was a whole-of-hospital assessment, and "a range of themes have emerged".
Ms Lane said the report would be a "very practical, useful and action-oriented" document rather than "something which sits on a shelf and gathers dust".
Asked if the task had proved more difficult than expected, Ms Lane said it had not been difficult, but "very interesting" and a "very useful process", in which staff had been "incredibly engaged and very supportive of the process, providing lots of good information".
However, this also meant that writing up the report would take longer because of the wealth of information provided.
In some ways the initial assessment process was "almost the easy part" because the team now had to make sure that it was giving the "appropriate input into the various issues" in its report. During the assessment some patients and community health services had contacted the team.
Ms Lane expected that the recommendations of the team would be considered by the board as it would then need to ensure they were delivered.
There would be recommendations which could be implemented straight away and these were likely to relate to clinical leadership steering the delivery of recommendations.
The National Health Board team comprising Ms Lane, Ministry of Health chief nurse Jane O'Malley, Canterbury District Health Board emergency medicine specialist Prof Mike Ardagh and forensic psychiatrist Dr Greg Young was brought in to look at Dunedin Hospital systems in late May.
