It would be the first needs assessment undertaken for Lakes District Hospital.
The assessment will be undertaken by Fraser Group Consulting, a Dunedin-based firm specialising in the health sector, led by FG principal Chris Fraser, the former Otago District Health Board regional planning and funding general manager.
It will include a complete "stocktake" of public health and disability services provided to the resident population of the district and will also quantify the hospital demands placed by visitors.
While the health board had been conducting a regional hospital capacity review for the past two years, the needs assessment would provide a comprehensive analysis and was the "necessary cornerstone" for any strategic planning.
Wakatipu Health Trust spokeswoman Maria Cole said the trust was seeking two outcomes from its focus on hospital services in Queenstown - the first was "fair and transparent funding" for the hospital services at Frankton and the second was community governance of the hospital, consistent with other hospitals in the South Island.
Unlike the DHB's review, which measures the utilisation of existing services, the assessment would seek to determine the "realistic health needs of Queenstown as it affects hospital services", Ms Cole said.
"I am still seeing correspondence from Wellington referring to Queenstown as a `remote rural town'.
"Driving past the airport last weekend I saw five passenger jets from three major airlines on the tarmac. We are hardly rural.
"Queenstown is the fastest growing district in the country yet it has seen no expansion of hospital services in 20 years.
"Moreover, there has been no proper needs assessment completed in recent memory - nor is there any published plan that the DHB has done for Lakes Hospital.
"The community is frustrated at this lack of planning, consultation and accountability."
Ms Cole said the needs assessment was the "proper starting point" for any planning process and the trust was delighted to have secured Mr Fraser's services.
The assessment would analyse throughput data from the hospital and benchmark it against the rest of New Zealand.
It would also document what services were delivered at Queenstown and identify those which were delivered elsewhere, for example, Invercargill.
"This will produce a gap analysis that will [provide] the equity of access that Queenstowners have to public health services at the hospital."
The results of the assessment would form the basis of a "robust case" the trust was developing to either engage "positively" with the DHB, or to present to the Minister in Wellington.
Ms Cole said the trust was "very pleased" to be undertaking the assessment and was "very optimistic" regarding the outcome.
"This exercise is a fundamental pre-requisite to the preparation of any strategic plan for our hospital and has been sadly lacking for our community for a long time.
"We have to remain positive - we're going to present them [the board] with hard, scientific data which has come from independent sources."
Ms Cole said the needs assessment would be completed in six weeks and would include meetings with all health practitioners and at least one public meeting in the resort.
Dates and venues for those meetings would be announced soon, she said.
