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| 25 Jan 2026 | |
| Media Stories |
After months of uncertainty, Mobile Health has welcomed news of a three-year public surgery contract for its Mobile Surgical Unit, says group chief executive Mark Eager.
Last year, Mobile Health received only a 12-month contract from Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, a lack of long-term certainty that forced the service to put on hold an order for a second mobile surgical unit. The service has been delivering elective surgery to rural communities for more than 20 years.
The possession of a draft three-year contract, starting on 1 July 2026 and including a two-year right of renewal, now gives Mobile Health the confidence to provide contractors the go-ahead to begin building the second unit, Mr Eager says.
The draft contract does not currently include funding for Mobile Health’s rural health education hub, a major provider of clinical education for rural health professionals, he says.
Historically, that training funding – supporting a “huge range” of rural health education provided by Mobile Health, including webinars, in-person study days and online courses – was part of the surgical unit contract.
“No one knows much about the education programme, but it’s probably [the] bigger footprint we leave on rural New Zealand than the surgical unit.”
Mr Eager says he is chasing information about the education funding, which is still being worked through with Te Whatu Ora, but he is confident it will be included in the final contract.
The $5.5 million Mobile Surgical Unit contract had remained largely unchanged for two decades, Mr Eager says, with public funders reducing the number of operations contracted rather than increasing the price.
Once contracted funding was exhausted, Mobile Health was typically given additional funding “from different buckets” to deliver uncontracted operations, meaning it still carried out about 1500 procedures a year.
Under the new draft contract, however, Mobile Health will be able to deliver as many operations as it is capable of, helping reduce surgical wait lists nationwide.
“We're also doing weekend work around the place just to help out as well because there is such a demand out there.”
The new unit, to be built in Australia, is expected to take about 18 months to arrive and will be used in part to help address long paediatric dental waiting lists, particularly in Auckland, he says.
At present, about 70 per cent of the existing unit’s work is paediatric dental surgery, Mr Eager says. With two units, Mobile Health hopes to rebalance that workload so the service can travel more frequently and help “blitz” other surgical waiting lists around the country.
The Mobile Health group also operates Mobile Medical, a mobile lithotripsy service for treating kidney stones, and its most recent venture, Mobile Imaging, a joint venture with Mercy Radiology providing mobile PET-CT scanning to regions without access to the technology.
Mobile Imaging currently holds a separate Te Whatu Ora contract to deliver PET-CT scans for public patients in Palmerston North, Hutt Valley and Dunedin, Mr Eager says.
Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, in an emailed response to New Zealand Doctor Rata Aotearoa queries about the contract, says it is "currently in active negotiations and details remain confidential at this stage".
