After nine years on the board, he was not cynical about the establishment of district health boards, saying he saw it as a genuine attempt to involve communities and empower them.
He told the board's last meeting in Invercargill yesterday he was not sure boards had fully realised that power yet and there were some key debates to be had around such issues as end-of-life healthcare.
There needed to be more sharing of ideas between boards where the contact was generally at chairman and chief executive level.
The boards had "effectively been reactive" because of the mismatch of historical funding and population-based funding, which "still haunts us", and had not been able to make the investments the community expected and wanted.
Chairman Errol Millar paid tribute to the work of leaving elected members and those who were yet to find out whether they had gained new appointments.
"We are saying goodbye to a tremendous amount of wisdom" from both of the previous boards, he said.
Deputy chairman Paul Menzies praised all 20 board members for their conduct in the transition to the new board.
It could have been a shambles with so many members, "all of us reasonably opinionated", he said.
Retiring Southland member Katie O'Connor acknowledged the work of Mr Millar, Mr Menzies and previous board chairmen Richard Thomson and Dennis Cairns, towards the "huge process" involved in merging the two boards.
The journey had been "up and down at times", but the group had been "absolutely fabulous".
Retiring Southland member Dot Wilson said she was the only person in New Zealand to stand on the "disability ticket" and she hoped it would lead to others doing the same.
Judith Medlicott, a retiring Otago member, said she had "thoroughly enjoyed" being involved with the art advisory committee, pointing out how reassuring it was for hospital patients to see art works rather than bare walls when they were sick and anxious.
Queenstown member Fiona McArthur said although she would no longer be on the board, she would continue to work to ensure health-service changes in the area happened in a "community-driven way".
• The board has only one new elected member, Mary Flannery, from Central Otago, who was welcomed as an observer at yesterday's meeting. The new board, which will have four ministerial appointees, yet to be announced, officially takes office on December 6.
