Thirteen general practices which want to leave the Well Dunedin Primary Health Organisation will have to go through a mediation procedure before they can do so.
The practices have approached the Taieri Strath Taieri PHO as they move to shift from Otago's biggest PHO.
Taieri chairman John Kelly said the board would establish a "mirror trust" to provide health services to Otago people at a meeting last night to enable it to accept the 13 practices.
The board's trust deed states it will provide services to Taieri and Strath Taieri people.
Speaking before the meeting, he said essentially they would be running two trusts alongside each other.
He would not comment on issues the 13 PHOs had with Well Dunedin, but said the practices had approached the Taieri PHO at its June board meeting.
"We heard what they had to say and then decided as a PHO to follow due process and advised everybody, including Well Dunedin, what was going on."
Well Dunedin chief executive Sandy Baines confirmed last night the 13 practices would be invited to participate in mediation in accordance with the dispute resolution procedure in their contracts.
She said she had not been officially notified of the practices' concerns and had invoked the dispute resolution procedure in the hope of being able to meet the practices and discuss their issues.
Ms Baines said she was concerned options for resolving issues amicably were becoming fewer.
She said patients needed to be aware that health programmes being run through the existing contracts the PHO had with the Otago District Health Board, which were running until the end of June next year, would not necessarily transfer to a different PHO.
She had concerns some of the practices would not submit their registers to the PHO on Friday, part of the process by which government funding was claimed quarterly.
The uncertainty about funding was potentially devastating for the organisation, which had programmes based on its population and was moving into new buildings next week because it had been growing.
Board chief executive Brian Rousseau said if practices wanted to move PHOs, that was up to them and the board did not have a role in that.
If practices did move, he did not see there would be an effect on the patients of those practices, but it would affect the viability of PHOs.
