"They all understand the enormous stress there is on health professionals in this district at the moment."
Wards heads the Tararua Health Group which provides district primary health services.
She was joined by her senior management team, three board members from the Midcentral District Health Board, MidCentral's general managers of strategy planning and performance, the chief executive of the Central PHO and the portfolio manager for primary health care, along with Steve Yanko, Manawatu Districts operations manager for St John, and Pete Sinclair, the fire chief for the Dannevirke Volunteer Fire Brigade.
It was a high-powered meeting, determined to come up with workable solutions.
"We discussed the challenges the Tararua District is facing," Mrs Collis said.
For Ms Wards, the pressure at the moment on her health professionals is critical, not helped by unpleasant postings on a local Facebook page.
"There have been significant changes in the permanent level of GPs working across Tararua," she said.
"Two have resigned for personal reasons and a couple are changing their working conditions, partially because of personal reasons as well.
"Our inability to attract permanent GPs means we're reliant on locums.
"Three of my permanent GPs travel from Palmerston North to Pahiatua and Dannevirke and I've had a resignation from a GP because of the gorge closure," she said.
"I foresaw this would happen and I now have staff signalling they don't know how much longer they'll continue."
Wards said was extremely concerned about the clinical risk to the community and the long-term access to services.
"The meeting was designed to generate short and long-term strategies we can introduce to reassure our community," she said.
"We've challenged everyone to do it quickly and I believe there are a couple of quite good short-term ideas we can implement."
Mrs Collis said the closure of State Highway 3 through the Manawatu Gorge was a circuit breaker.
"It's pushed us to do things quickly," she said.
Wards said she also asked MidCentral District Health Board for an additional resource for a GP and/or medical cover.
"They seem very willing to assist and they've an increased capacity to recruit over and above what I can do as well," she said.
"As a priority I will be working with the PHO and MidCentral to secure resources and as well as asking for help from MidCentral, we've also asked the Tararua District Council to help in marketing our district for recruitment."
Other help asked for included the better scheduling of appointments for patients from the Tararua District attending clinics in Palmerston North to allow for travel to the Manawatu.
"It's a strain on the St John Health Shuttle volunteer drivers who have to be up so early in the morning to get people to Palmerston North by 7am and, really, do patients all need to be there at that time?" she said.
"This was an extremely solution-focused discussion with everyone genuinely wanting to understand what is happening."
Another innovation is the need to explore virtual consultations with specialists in Palmerston North, via their computer screens - a system already widely used on the West Coast.
The group agreed to come together in October to report on progress and Mrs Collis said everyone would be working as hard and fast as they could to come up with assistance to Tararua District residents and under-stress health professionals.