About 100 Wānaka residents attended the first of four meetings about Health New Zealand's new clinical services plan for the region. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd
Health New Zealand says shifting appointments out of major hospitals and into communities could spare Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes residents as many as 40,000 road trips a year.
Officials have unveiled ideas for overhauling the area's health services, after promising in July to assess long-standing inequities.
On Tuesday, at the first of four meetings about Health NZ's new clinical services plan for the region, hospitals funding director Rachel Haggerty told Wānaka residents the south was the only place in New Zealand where the population was outstripping available services.
She said Health NZ wanted to bring more services out of Dunedin and Invercargill Hospitals and into Queenstown, Wānaka, and Cromwell.
That could include investing in CT scanners for diagnostic work, and providing cancer treatments such as IV chemotherapy and infusion therapies, she said.
"We know that the further you live from a cancer service - international research tells us this, local research tells us this - the more likely you are to have a poor outcome. The closer you live to cancer services, the more likely you are to survive well," she said.
Health NZ also wanted to boost local mental health and addiction services, and link up maternity services to provide better local antenatal support, she said.
"We've identified that a lot of people go out of town to get their obstetric consult or to see the obstetrician about their baby. This is before they have it, the planning stage... and that's one of those services where we're saying, actually we need to provide much better local obstetric support so that people do not have to travel," she said.
Health NZ expected to complete the plan by the end of the year and send it to the Health Minister for review over summer, Haggerty said.
"Our challenge is how to bring this together in a really tight case to advise the Minister. The Minister will then think about it over the summer period, then come back to us and probably ask us a lot of questions," she said.
Health NZ's ideas were met with some scepticism by Wānaka locals.
One questioned when Health NZ would invest in intensive care units for the region, while local retired surgeon Allan Panting told officials he was concerned about an apparent lack of attention to urgent care-including for strokes and heart attacks.
Long-time resident Shirley Allan said she was tired of waiting for concrete action, telling officials they had spent a long time "talking and planning and thinking."
"We've got no outcomes. We've got no actual decisions. You're saying that somebody's going to go away... and think about this over summer. Well, that's kind of like a slap in the face. It means you're not taking it seriously," she said.
Advocacy group Health Action Wānaka, which has been campaigning for more equitable local health services, was more optimistic.
Chair Monique Mayze said she was feeling hopeful.
"A whole lot of very good work has gone into developing the plan, and it does appear to be data driven and evidence based. And that's really what we want to see: an evidence based solution for this community and the wider region," she said.
Health NZ was due to hold three more community meetings in Cromwell, Queenstown, and online, on Wednesday and Thursday.
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