Southern's performance in meeting elective surgery targets was improving, but the Canterbury initiative was seen as a way of creating a buffer to ensure the present 120-day limit for appointments was met, SDHB specialist services executive director Patrick Ng told a commissioners meeting yesterday.
The Ministry of Health had funded the CDHB's programme lead to come to Dunedin next month for workshops.
"Canterbury initiatives included improved pathways into the hospital for referrals, primary care support for referrals that weren't able to be accepted by the hospital, operational management of available outpatient clinics, development of reporting, production planning and forecasting, and forward planning," Mr Ng said.
In a related development, the board would move to an "acuity" system of assessing elective works, intended so the most urgent cases took priority, he said.
Time on the waiting list would also be an acuity factor to try to prevent less urgent cases continually being superceded by newer urgent cases, Mr Ng said.
Acuity had been used in the opthalmology department and was successful, he said.
That department - which previously had a chronic wait list - met a June 30 target of clearing all appointments with greater than 1½ times the estimated waiting time.
If approved, the new electives policy would be used in general surgery first, possibly followed by orthopaedics, ear, nose and throat, and urology.
Strategy, primary and community executive director Lisa Gestro said yesterday plans to move psychogeriatric patients from Dunedin to either South Canterbury or Christchurch because of a bed shortage were under way.
All three psychogeriatric units in Dunedin are full, and 13 people are waiting for beds.
