Getting people to turn up to outpatient medical appointments by texting them might not be as simple as it sounds, Southland medical officer of health David Tulloch suggests.
He told a recent Southern District Health Board's hospitals' advisory committee meeting in Dunedin there could be confidentiality issues involved in instances where there might be a family cellphone.
Telling all family members about "father's trip to the sexually transmitted diseases clinic is not the sort of thing which goes down well at home," he said.
He was responding to a question from board chairman Joe Butterfield about the 10% of patients who did not turn up to outpatient clinics in Southland.
Mr Butterfield suggested there would be fewer than 10% of total patients going to an STD clinic.
Mr Tulloch agreed, but said texting was not an instant fix to the problem of people not turning up. Texting had been tried.
To cope with the problem the hospital tended to overbook clinics, so that if someone did not turn up, highly productive people were not left "twiddling their thumbs".
Acting chief executive Lexie O'Shea said some clinics were well known for a high rate of non-attendance.
In past discussions on this issue it has been suggested that those clinics dealing with more urgent conditions were generally better supported than those where changes to patients' lifestyles might be required.
Mrs O'Shea said it was a complex area, always monitored for potential improvements.
Concerns about progress in providing extra acute surgery at Dunedin Hospital were expressed at the meeting by committee member Richard Thomson.
He described a statement about the management of the risk that diagnostic and support services might be unable to staff extra acute surgery hours as sounding like "surrender".
The report from the services suggested that the risk would be mitigated by reducing service delivery to less acute services.
Mrs O'Shea assured him much work was going on in this area and indicated more would be known about this soon.
Earlier this year, following increasing clinical concerns about poor access to acute surgery, the board agreed to fund an extra 35 hours of acute surgery weekly, but because staff had to be recruited for this it was not likely to happen until November.
