National leader John Key has reiterated aspects of his party's health policy -- one month after the Government released a leaked version of the policy.

Mr Key today "released" parts of the policy on the campaign trail at a Palmerston North medical centre.

Key features include plans to build 20 new surgical theatres in a bid to reduce elective surgery waiting lists, training more theatre staff and farming more hospital procedures out to local doctors' clinics.

Mr Key said the cost of building and staffing the theatres would be $180 million over five years.

National would also put $13 million a year to "kick start the devolution of services to primary care".

Mr Key said the policy was necessary to cut waiting times that had continued to grow despite a massive funding injection into the health sector by the Labour-led Government over the past nine years.

"Fewer operations are being performed per capita and the average waiting time has increased from 55 days in 2002 to 75 days now.

"We need to boost the number of elective surgeries performed in public and private hospitals, expand the services that primary care delivers and carefully invest in new elective capacity in the public health system."

Mr Key said the cost would be met out of the existing budget allocations for health.

It is the third health policy announced in recent weeks that will rely on a reprioritisation of existing health funding.

National has also promised to boost medical training places by 200 a year at an eventual cost of $31 million a year and to boost hospice funding by $15 million a year.

Mr Key said National would find savings in the sector to pay for the changes.

"We believe we can achieve significant improvements in health service delivery while maintaining the same spending track that Labour is running."

Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton released a leaked version of National's health policy on September 10.