Women are being turned away from Tauranga and Christchurch hospitals for treatment for "non-urgent" gynaecological conditions, as a clearer picture emerges of nationwide shortfalls in women's health care.

Other DHBs are also struggling to see all the patients referred to them.

RNZ has been reporting on the struggles of Counties Manukau patients to be seen by a specialist for conditions like endometriosis or incontinence, because the service is under so much pressure it can only deal with the most urgent conditions, like cancer.

It's now been reported that women in the Bay of Plenty, Canterbury, South Canterbury and Blenheim areas have also not been guaranteed a specialist appointment.

The Bay of Plenty DHB says its Obstetrics and Gynaecology service is only accepting urgent referrals.

It's elective services manager Dorothy McKeown says the service had changed criteria for a first specialist appointment in May after it experienced an increase in demand.

Women who were not deemed urgent were referred back to their GPs for care, she says in a statement.

The DHB declined a request to be interviewed.

And in Canterbury, many non-urgent cases are also turned away and sent back to GPs who had sent them for specialist care in the first place.

The DHB's executive director of planning, funding and decision support, Carolyn Gullery, says the mosque attacks, junior doctor strikes and and the flooding of an outpatients building, had put a lot of pressure on the system.

That meant they had to raise the threshold for who qualified to be treated by a specialist.

"This is not about us never seeing [the patients], this is actually about us saying 'we are going to see this group of patients first and then we will come back and change the referral criteria again," says Carolyn.

"We have agonised over changing the pathways and changing the referrals, but the department feels they need to have this happen to enable them to get back on top of the process so they can return to delivering timely care."

She expects the situation to be back to normal by the end of the year and in the meantime, GPs were getting extra support where needed, she says.

In Blenheim, some women had not been able to be seen by a hospital specialist this year but that had changed last month, after new doctors were hired and started work, says the Nelson Marlborough DHB.

Women with non-urgent conditions are now being seen at Wairau hospital again, says the DHB.

In response to an RNZ query, South Canterbury DHB says women with non-gynaecological conditions were not guaranteed a specialist appointment, but had not outlined any further details.