Oamaru Hospital is not sure whether proposals to bring in pre-packaged meals for New Zealand's hospitals will affect its kitchen, which supplies not only the hospital but also almost 11,000 meals on wheels each year.
Waitaki District Health Services Ltd, a company owned by the Waitaki District Council, provides health services in the Waitaki district and operates the hospital.
Company chief executive officer Robert Gonzales said when contacted he did not know what effect centralising meal production would have on the Oamaru kitchen.
''Personally, I don't think it will,'' he said.
He said the kitchen was an integral part of the services the company provided, and not funded separately.
The hospital kitchen employed four or five people, some working part-time depending on demand, to produce meals from scratch each day.
The meals were for patients in wards and the maternity unit, visiting doctors and specialists and some outpatients who needed meals.
In the 2011-12 financial year, the kitchen also provided 10,833 meals for the five-day meals-on-wheels service.
Under a plan revealed last week, food for hospitals could be transported from production hubs in Auckland and Christchurch. Many hospital kitchens will be downgraded.
