Yesterday the mobile surgery - running since March 2003 - clocked up its 1007th patient at Oamaru.
The bus visits Oamaru Hospital, and its catchment of 22,000 people, once every five weeks as it tours 23 hospitals nationwide.
Waitaki District Health Services chief executive Robert Gonzales, of Oamaru, called the bus an ''amazing service'' at a short ceremony to mark the 1000 milestone at the 30 bed hospital yesterday.
Nevertheless, Mr Gonzales said he would prefer to see the bus visit more often, as it was important for rural people to receive care ''as close to home as possible''.
''I think this community deserves better,'' Mr Gonzales said.
''But having said that we need to be realistic with health funding becoming more and more scarce.
''There are some things that can be realistically done in rural areas and some things not - and major surgery is one of those things. But certainly for minor surgery it is a real advantage for rural people to have that local access.''
Mobile Health managing director Dr Stu Gowland, of Christchurch, was one of the founders of the surgical bus. Each year, $150,000 worth of day procedures were performed inside it, he said. And, in its 13th year, the bus was approaching 20,000 operations.
Yet it was the value it added to the hospitals it visited that was its primary benefit.
''It has the same effect that one operating theatre would have on the waiting list,'' he said.
''But I think the more important thing, or two things, really, is: people develop skills, the nurses, in airways management and a whole lot of that kind of stuff.
''The other thing is you've got to think your way through the solution to a problem ... it's really saying `you never thought you'd have operating theatres in your hospital again, but you have'.''
Further innovation was necessary for the future of healthcare in New Zealand, Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, of Oamaru, said yesterday. But it was easy to see the benefit the surgical bus offered in day to day terms as well.
