New Dunedin Hospital must be fullsized

APPARENTLY the projected costs for the new Dunedin Hospital are over budget, and the Ministry of Health is desperately trying to keep the project close to budget. What a surprise (ODT, 3.9.22).

This presumably is the same bunch of bungling bureaucrats that for years have been unable to accurately assess the expenditure required by the old health board to provide health services.

How can they be expected all of a sudden to be able to accurately forecast the cost of a new hospital? Their answer now is to downsize the hospital and reduce its capacity to provide services.

The hospital is, in my opinion, already 10 years too late, is probably going to take 10 years too long to build, and will end up being 10 times too small to provide the services for an expanding population when it is completed.

Where health is concerned, cost should not be a consideration.

We all saw how billions were there to be used when the Covid19 epidemic surfaced, and were assured there was still plenty in reserve if extra finance was needed.

Rather than building to the original plan for the hospital, it should be upsized.

It will never be cheaper to construct than now, and with the new expanded bureaucratic health operating system put in place by the Government (possibly at the suggestion of the existing bureaucrats themselves) it is unlikely the southern region’s hospital health needs will again be considered for expansion or upgrade in the next 100 years.

It is essential the new hospital should be built to the full original specifications, which will hopefully be sufficient to provide the services the region requires over the next 25 to 50 years.

Allan Baxter Invercargill ...................................