Recommendations that Lakes District Hospital be retained and expanded received a largely positive response in Queenstown last night.
Dismissed by a National Health Board panel were earlier controversial proposals for a "one-stop-shop" integrated family health centre.
One of Queenstown's medical centres, which had been a strong critic of the Southern District Health Board proposals backed the new plans when they were unveiled last night, but warned the "devil is in the delivery".
Dr Nigel Thompson, of the Wakatipu Medical Centre, said he was surprised by the "muted response from the audience" of 60 residents, medical professionals and community leaders, at the end of the Wakatipu health services expert panel's presentation of its 21 recommendations for the DHB.
"I'm delighted we finally have a document to go forward to the DHB ... and it needs to be clear we will seek delivery on our document," Dr Thompson said, to a round of applause.
National Health Board panel chairman Dr Peter Foley said it was down to everyone to "keep the Southern DHB on their mettle", once the panel formally submitted its 82-page report "to sort out the festering problem" of the Wakatipu's health service to the DHB meeting in Queenstown on Friday.
The NHB panel reaffirmed the continued use of the Lakes District Hospital and its emergency department, and also recommended keeping at least eight doctors, including a registrar or two, and expanding it into a "health campus" in partnership with the University of Otago.
Dr Foley told the audience in the City Impact Church only 35% of the land dedicated for health provisions near the hospital was used.
"Let's use it. Let's develop it better than it has in the past," Dr Foley said.
In response to questions on costings from developer Alastair Porter, Dr Foley said detailed discussions about expanding the hospital had not yet been held.
Noise mitigation from nearby Queenstown Airport was "not insurmountable", he said.
Despite the "lack of respect and mistrust" of the Southern DHB in the Wakatipu, the panel recommended governance and accountability was best kept with the DHB, with a new "community reference group" and clinical forum in consultation.
The NHB found about $24 million was spent on Wakatipu health. Dr Foley said he did not think the community was either underfunded or overfunded.
However, $8.7 million was spent on inpatient and outpatient activity which flowed to Invercargill, Dunedin and other South Island DHBs - more cash than the $5.5 spent on the Lakes District Hospital.
Panel member and senior emergency physician Dr Angela Pitchford said the recommendation for a CT scanner for Central Otago, based in the Lakes District Hospital, was made so urgent diagnostics would determine whether the patient's home, or which hospital, and how to get there, was most the most appropriate.
"Patient pathways" to the best healthcare could no longer be determined by the "geographical prejudices" of the old division of the South along two separate DHBs, the panel said.
The NHB confirmed in the report the recommendations "over time, would not cost the SDHB any more and would provide more healthcare services to the population of the Wakatipu".
The NHB said with better co-operation between Dunstan and Lakes District hospitals, and more innovative practice, "better value for money can be achieved."
Key recommendations
• Retain governance of the hospital and enhance services at the Lakes District Hospital Frankton site.
• Co-ordinate more across district and Central Otago.
• Retain hospital emergency department.
• Partner with the University of Otago to develop a "centre of excellence" for training rural health practitioners.
• Maintain minimum roster of eight medical full-time equivalents, one or two of whom could be registrars.
• Extend an open invitation to appropriate health providers to move to hospital site.
• Develop increased Wakatipu capacity in aged residential and palliative-care beds.
• Establish a CT scanner for Central Otago at hospital.
• Consolidate diagnostic services, such as laboratory and radiology, on hospital site.
• Establish a community reference group.
