Underfunding

 
Is Queenstown receiving its fair share of hospital funding from  Invercargill?

For a long time Queenstowners have felt short-changed by the amount of funding provided by Invercargill. Yet the DHB has long maintained that Lakes Hospital is being subsidised by Invercargill. So what is the truth?
 
While it is difficult to compare other regional hospital funding without direct access to their individual accounts, we have compiled a table below that shows the indicative hospital funding provided to other centres.
 
                                     Annual DHB Funding         2008 population             Funding
                                             $'000s                           Stats NZ                        per head
 
  Central Otago                       7266                                17700                           $ 411
  Clutha District                       4947                                17350                           $ 285
  Waitaki                                9460                                 20700                          $ 457
  Queenstown  *                      2876                                 26400                          $ 160
  Gore                                    4514                                 12250                          $ 368
 
 * The DHB has budgeted $2,876,000 spend at Lakes Hospital for the 2009 year. This is a reduction from $3,100,200 budgeted for the previous year.
 
 Each year the DHB is required to prepare an Annual Plan and have that plan signed off by the Minister. The Southland District Health Board does not prepare any published Plan for Queenstown so it is impossible to establish any separate accountability to the Queenstown community. Queenstowners simply have no Annual Plan for their hospital.
 
 But there is a greater concern when looking at the 2009 DHB Plan. The population figures on which the Plan is based are 3 years out of date. The Plan shows the QLDC District having a population of 15941. Yet Stats NZ report that the population of our District as at June 2008 was 26,400. ie The current DHB Annual Plan understates the QLDC population by 40%.
The DHB Plan, with the out of date population figures, was approved and signed off by the Minister, Hon Tony Ryall in February 2009.