Labour's health spokeswoman Annette King says district health boards spend far too much on external consultants - but Northland's general manager of finance, funding and commercial services Meng Cheong says the spending is justified.
"We spend money sparingly on external consultants," Mr Cheong said.
"We do use informal peer review and benchmarking best practice with other [DHBs], for example comparing average length of stay and adopting best practice models of care when we can.
"External consultants are only used when the specific skill set or expertise cannot be sourced in house, and only for short-term contracts."
Asked if the spending was good value for Northland taxpayer dollars, Mr Cheong said, "Yes. For example, the consulting advice we received for the energy efficiency review will result in cost savings of approximately $55,000 per annum."
The board always looked at whether the work could be done internally before hiring a consultant, he said.
"For longer-term assignments, it is probably more cost effective to hire new staff. However, sometimes it is more expedient, especially if we have an urgent timeline, to source external consultants with very specific skill sets and expertise for short term assignments."
Consultants were needed for independent reviews, he said. "There are times when the [DHB] carries out reviews of its own services and these may be undertaken using existing staff.
"Not all reviews are internal to the [DHB] and where there are external providers involved often there is a requirement for the reviewer to be independent ... Due to the nature of the reviews being time-bound, it does not make sense to hire staff."
Ms King believed DHBs needed to have more long-term positions.
"Long-term positions would mean getting people with intellectual knowledge who would know what had gone on before so you wouldn't have to have someone starting from the beginning every time they started a project.
"It would not only be cost effective but also effective in terms of provision of advice and service.
"Getting in external consultants that don't have institutional contacts isn't cost saving in the end."
Ms King believed the large sums of money for outside consultants did not ultimately benefit the public.
"There is a place for specialist advice and no doubt you can bring in particular people to help with particular projects - all governments have done that.
"But there are positions that need to be long term.
"Constantly getting rid of people and bringing in people is a waste of money and doesn't lead to a strong public service," she said.
- NZME.
Northland DHB external consultant spending
2011/12 $437,834
2012/13 $286,866
2013/14 $451,160
