The Roxburgh community and its local health services trust want answers from WellSouth about transitional funding that will be cut in January 2026.

WellSouth Primary Health Organisation chief executive Andrew Swanson-Dobbs told the Roxburgh Medical Centre last week the PHO had been erroneously paying over $130k per annum of rural funding to the practice since 2015.

HealthCentral has been operating the Roxburgh Health Centre since 2022, and said it will be forced to review its level of service, as well as patient surcharges, as a result of the funding cuts.

Roxburgh Health Services Trust chair Glen McDonald said following a health services trust meeting on Saturday, HealthCentral assured the board they would stand by them.

“But when you have halved the income of a business, it’s only sustainable for so long,” he said, questioning whether HealthCentral “can do it or not”.

Glen said he compared WellSouth’s annual report from 2016 to 2024, which showed its funding had jumped from $68M to $118M.

“How can their [funding] and expenses … double in eight years, but our income is halved?” he asked.

HealthCentral said in a statement last week the implications of an unanticipated $130k reduction in funding “are extremely serious for a small rural practice such as Roxburgh”.

The trust has written to WellSouth voicing its disapproval of the decision, but WellSouth said the transitional funding had been an error, and only meant to have been paid for one to two years.

It was debatable exactly what percent decrease in funding there would be for Roxburgh: HealthCentral says the decrease will be 84 percent, as it covers Alexandra as well, while WellSouth said it would only be 54 percent.

“WellSouth said it was transitional funding but they can’t give us any documentation on that,” Glen said.

“There are no notes, no minutes of a meeting, about it saying it was transitional.”

Glen said he wasn’t questioning WellSouth’s honesty, but he wanted documentation to prove the funding was only transitional and would disappear.

WellSouth said it has been transparent with HealthCentral. 

“...any further historical documentation of the transitional funding would need to include Health NZ as the funding comes from them, WellSouth is the administrator of the funding,” they said.

Referring to WellSouth’s decision to halve its funding as “financial mismanagement”, HealthCentral said it cannot be expected to absorb the significantly higher cost and responsibility of rostering staff on weekends and public holidays.

Andrew Swanson-Dobbs told The Central App this week that recent stories about the funding cuts to the Roxburgh Medical Centre overlooked the history and context of rural funding, “as well as the role of WellSouth as the primary health organisation for Otago and Southland”.

WellSouth supported 79 general practices across its network; 37 were classified as rural general and the funding was required to be spread across all rural practices in the region.

“Increases in Health NZ funding equate to increases for our general practices, though the funding is not nearly enough,” Andrew said. 

“We believe every general practice is underfunded and that successive governments have failed to recognise the disparity between primary and secondary doctors and nurses.”

Andrew said WellSouth received $5.48M rural funding this year, which had to be spread across the 37 rural practices equitably, “as it should be”.

Working closely with Health NZ recently to understand how rural funding was distributed, Andrew said some practices - such as HealthCentral - stood out, “that needed to be investigated and understood”.

The transitional money that was now overpaid had to be put back into the pot and spread across the rest of the rural practices, he said.

Read more: Roxburgh Medical Centre ‘blindsided’ by funding withdrawal

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