The Southern region should have a five-year cancer treatment plan by the end of this year.
"We need to have a considered, longer-term plan, as it has become very apparent to the board that stopgap measures will not be sufficient," chairman Pete Hodgson said.
"We are dealing with a systemic issue that will only grow larger."
Treatment delays were stressful for staff and unacceptable for patients and their families, he said.
A month ago, the board was shaken into action by the revelation that its waiting list for radiation oncology treatment was at a record 157 people, and that it was also performing poorly in other cancer diagnosis and treatment statistics.
The cancer agency was called on to help and it had stressed the need for looking beyond the current crisis, Mr Hodgson said.
Although the Government’s imminent reform of the health system meant the board would soon no longer exist, it needed to do this work and would have the plan completed by December, he said.
"It will be based on the trends we expect to see in cancer treatment in the next five years," Mr Hodgson said.
"The idea that we are a DHB who thinks ahead on the needs for cancer and is prepared to commit to addressing them as time goes by will be attractive to recruits who might otherwise have anxieties that they were joining an underresourced service."
The board discussed its cancer treatment predicament in the public-excluded section of its meeting, and Mr Hodgson later said there had been a "strong" presentation from senior oncologists on the issues facing them.
The board had requested the presentation and what it heard would ensure cancer treatment waiting times remained firmly on its agenda, Mr Hodgson said.
In the past four weeks, the radiation oncology waiting list figure had decreased slightly, and a large amount of work had been done to tackle the problem, he said.
"We have already taken urgent steps, including outsourcing some of our waiting list.
"However, this is not sufficient and we must identify other short-term gains we can make."
That included a fresh approach to recruiting staff, and Mr Hodgson said the board had been given several possible leads.
The board also had to commit to training its own oncology staff and specialist cancer nurses, he said.
The oncologists had been asked to reappear at the September board meeting to discuss progress.
