Hospital project on waiting list

Previously approved plans for a new operating theatre and bigger emergency department at Southland Hospital have been put on ice because of design changes.

Southlanders will now have to wait for Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand to approve the improvements at a national level, although it’s unclear when a decision will be made.

Surgeons, staff and former Southland-based DHB board members had been calling for the new infrastructure to help deal with an overwhelmed emergency department and lengthy surgery delays.

Plans were initially approved in late 2021, but when the designs were changed, the cost rose to more than $10 million – which meant the project had to go through a national process.

Te Whatu Ora Southern corporate services executive director Nigel Trainor said the ED expansion and fifth operating theatre were originally treated as two separate projects.

The new design would see the two built as one two-storey addition to the hospital building, he said.

A business case was being developed and would be submitted to Health New Zealand’s Health Investment Unit in the 2022-23 financial year, Trainor said.

About $3m worth of infrastructure improvements are expected at Southland Hospital in the next year while $34.6m worth of projects approved by the former Southern District Health Board members for both Southland and Otago will still go ahead.

The largest of these is a replacement of the district’s patient management computer system at a cost of $9.6m, Trainor said.

The then Southern DHB received $1.5m from the Government’s Rapid Hospital Improvements Programme in December 2021 which will fund upgrades to isolation rooms at Southland Hospital, but the cost may exceed this funding, Trainor said.

Another $1.6m had been set aside to create more clinic space for the oncology and gynaecology departments and to improve the hospital’s water infrastructure, he said.

A Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand spokesperson said the agency’s infrastructure and investment group monitored projects funded by the Health Capital Envelope of more than $10m.

It’s currently monitoring six infrastructure projects in Southern, excluding the new Dunedin Hospital build, which come to a total of $81m.

These include new IT systems, maintenance for the existing Dunedin Hospital and a rural primary birthing unit in Central Otago.