Maintenance costs kept in check at Southern District Health Board to help reduce the budget deficit this year may increase next year, it was suggested at last week's board meeting.
During discussion of the board's deficit, which is expected to be $10.5 million lower than planned, chairman Joe Butterfield asked whether any of the areas where savings had been made this year could push next year's costs out.
Finance and funding general manager Robert Mackway-Jones said the main area where this could happen would be maintenance.
Areas of non-clinical spending and infrastructure, including maintenance and information technology, were places where there was the biggest ability to manage discretionary spending, he said.
As well as savings already built into the budget, the board has further reduced spending in these areas by $2 million.
Mr Mackway-Jones said his forecast of a $4.4 million deficit by the end of the financial year next month, compared with the original $14.9 million, could be conservative.
One area where spending so far has been lower than expected is on medicines.
Mr Mackway-Jones said spending on medicine nationally was tracking below forecasts, but Otago and Southland was further ahead than other areas.
One reason appeared to be the greater use of cheaper generic medicines in the area compared with other places.
It was pointed out that $10.6 million, the amount the board is ahead of budget so far, was only about 1% of the $674 million budgeted revenue to date.
Mr Butterfield said someone had described trying to break even with a board budget of more than $800 million as like "trying to land a 747 on a sixpence.
"You young people wouldn't know what a sixpence was".
