Southern District Health Board says it can justify a decision to fund two new CT scanners, despite a projected deficit of $10 million.
The board supports the installation of a scanner at Dunstan Hospital in Clyde immediately and another at Queentown hospital in two years.
The DHB will pay the operating costs, but the communities have to raise $1.4 million to purchase them.
A review by the National Health Board last year recommended that only one scanner be obtained, and that it be installed in Queenstown.
But DHB finance and funding manager Robert Mackway-Jones says the needs of people in central Otago and Queenstown were too strong to ignore.
