The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists wants an extra $360 million to be spent over three years, but District Health Boards New Zealand says scope for that level of funding is now minimal.
The figure appears in the parties' business case document released this week by the association titled "Securing a sustainable senior medical and dental workforce in New Zealand".
DHBNZ spokeswoman Karen Roach said the figure cited was intended as largely self-funding by the boards or re-investment and since the document was drafted there had been significant changes in the economy.
She referred to government calls for financial constraint and the cost of the February 22 earthquake.
ASMS executive director Ian Powell saw the extra funding as just one part of proposals which had the "potential to be the real circuit breaker" in the way decisions were made in health.
Anyone who considered senior doctors were being greedy with a proposal for extra $360 million spending on salaries over three years was "struggling to see beyond the end of their nose".
It had been hoped that negotiations might be concluded yesterday on the multi-employer collective agreement, but scheduled talks have been postponed.
Mr Powell is hopeful the parties will be able to keep their "eye on the ball" as they had come too far to get the "speed wobbles" now.
Mr Powell said important government initiatives such as its six health targets and promotion of clinical leadership were at risk because the workforce was in a downward spiral.
It was estimated the country was short of more than 600 specialists in 2008.
At that time only two specialties, orthopaedics and plastic surgery, had more than the recommended number of practitioners per head of population. Mr Powell said the reason for that was because in both of these specialties consultants were able to carry out considerable work in the private sector, but that was not possible in all disciplines.
Shortages meant that junior doctors complained of poor access to good quality training by senior doctors.
The senior doctors were unable to train them because they were dealing with increased clinical demands.
Increasing the number of senior doctors would improve training, and also achieve gains in safety, reduce waste, improve the collaboration between primary care and secondary care and ensure regional and national co-ordination of health services.
The increased funding suggested would be $40 million this year and further boosts of $80 million in the next two years. The cumulative effect of this would be $360 million.
Mr Powell said while this sounded a lot of money, it was very small when compared with total board spending which was more than $10 billion this year.
If there were more senior doctors, boards would spend less than the $6 million they did now on recruitment and relocation of specialists, and could possibly halve the $50 million spent on locum costs.
Ms Roach said boards needed to live within their means and could not meet significant salary claims without realising savings elsewhere through service efficiencies or reductions.
Boards wanted to work constructively with senior doctors to see whether there were ways of freeing up resources through ways senior doctors worked that would enable sustainable "salary improvements".
While it is hard to make direct comparisons with Australian specialists' pay and conditions, in 2009 step 1 of the 15-step New Zealand scale was $128,596, whereas in five Australian states it ranged from $154,144 to $226,246.
The top step in New Zealand was $195,441, compared with a range of $219,958 to $294,143 in the Australian states.
