The junior doctors' recent wage settlement helped boost the Otago District Health Board services' overspending last month by about $200,000.
After three months of the current financial year, the services' deficit, excluding mental health, is $788,000 higher than planned.
By the end of September, the board had expected its services to be running at a loss of $417,000.
Last month, the services' personnel costs ran over budget by half a million dollars, reaching $15.6 million. As well as the extra costs associated with the resident doctors' wage settlement, a further $215,000 was due to an annual leave phasing error.
The month-long norovirus outbreak affecting services at Dunedin and Wakari Hospitals has cost the board at least $276,000.
Other expenses over budget include those related to orthopaedic surgery, where some joint replacement operations have been carried out at the private Mercy Hospital because Dunedin Hospital does not have the capacity to do them.
Last month, the board paid $131,000 for nine joint replacement operations at Mercy Hospital at an average cost of $15,000.
The previous month, the board spent $100,000 for six operations there.
Business analyst Grant Paris, in his August report, said the operations cost about $10,000 more per patient than doing the operations in-house, although it could be argued that this cost could be offset against vacancies - the reason the operations could not be carried out in the public setting.
Chief operating officer Vivian Blake, in her monthly report to the board Hospital Advisory Committee today, shows that staff vacancies at the end of last month totalled 130, compared with 142.93 the previous month.
Senior medical officer vacancies and nursing vacancies had dropped during the month, and at the end of September there were no junior doctor vacancies.
The board's overall budget shows an expected $9,335,000 deficit this year.
Its district annual plan has yet to be approved by the Ministry of Health because of this.
