Hospital plan must be enduring

LAST year Dunedin was promised a brand new, stateoftheart, hospital.

The city is still getting this muchneeded facility, but doubts persist about exactly what Dunedin — and the wider region the hospital will also serve — is actually to receive.

As reported in the Otago Daily

Times yesterday, planners desperate to keep what is already a challenging $1.4 billion budget in check seriously explored the possibility of constructing a single hospital building, rather than the twobuilding complex previously announced.

There will be much relief that the plan for separate day surgery and acute services buildings remains in place.

Quite apart from the fact it would make transition from the old, sprawling and inadequate present hospital complex much easier, it would also mean some services would be up and running in new quarters sooner than would have been the case if a larger single building was being constructed.

The big question still to be decided is which services will be offered in the new buildings and which will be offered in the community.

Clinicians have doggedly fought planners for months about what should be ‘‘in scope’’ and what should be out.

This is not simply a turf war or protecting departmental or professional interests; Dunedin Hospital’s doctors and nurses know their current facilities make it a challenge to provide the best care possible to their community and want to be able to do so without compromise in their new facilities.

While it is accepted that some services will devolve to healthcare hubs in the community, they argue that many must remain in the hospital so proper coordinated care is offered, no matter how much it might be better for the budget if they were elsewhere.

If the job that needs to be done can be achieved within what now looks likely to be an 89,000sq m hospital, all well and good.

But if budget constraints do indeed mean some services just can’t fit into the new buildings — and the health of southerners suffers accordingly — it will be a false and deeply unpopular economy.

When the Government announced the budget for the $1.4 billion project it sounded generous; the difficulties that have been uncovered in trying to build on the innercity site suggest that more will be needed.

With infrastructure projects set to be crucial in the rebuilding of the national economy after the threat of Covid19 is battled, it would perhaps be better for the Government to bite the bullet now and increase the budget for the hospital, to build something closer to the original vision for the complex rather than a hodgepodge of compromise and cut corners.

There will be many who believe the current difficulties are a reason to relitigate the decision to build in central Dunedin rather than elsewhere.

This ship has sailed; the arguments for a hospital located in the inner city are strong, the issues with building elsewhere or the expense of reconditioning the present hospital are plentiful, and having bought almost all the land required for the new hospital it is probably far too late to turn back now.

The important thing now is for all sides to work together to make the future new Dunedin Hospital live up to the hype of being the most modern and efficient hospital in New Zealand.

If Covid19 has taught us anything, it is the importance of having flexible hospital workspaces able to be readily converted to other purposes, and this is what was pledged in the new hospital.

It is what this community needs now, and it should be an asset future generations are thankful this generation built.

What it cannot be is what Dunedin has now; a decaying structure past its functional date just a few decades after its construction.