At a glance: A downscaled new Dunedin Hospital is going ahead:
- Projected to open in 2031
- 351 beds, with capacity to expand to 404 beds over time
- 20 short-stay surgical beds, a new model of care
- 22 theatres, with capacity to expand to 24 theatres over time
- 41 same day beds to provide greater capacity for timely access to specialist and outpatient procedures
- 58 ED spaces, including a short-stay unit and specialised emergency psychiatric care
- 20 imaging units for CT, MRI and Xray procedures, with 4 additional spaces available for future imaging advancement.
— sourced from Minister of Health Simeon Brown.
The new Dunedin Hospital announced today will be a “complete shell” with fewer beds than the current one, NZNO president Anne Daniels says.
Brown today announced that a new $1.88 billion hospital would go ahead, rather than a refurbishment of the current one. However, the new hospital would be scaled back, with fewer beds — 351 rather than the 398 originally planned.
‘This hospital would have been even more downsized if it wasn’t for the people.’
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The current hospital has 396 beds — but only 329 are staffed.
While the new hospital would have the same number of floors, they would not all be furnished initially, rather “future-proofed” for future expansion. For example, bed numbers could expand to 404 over time, he said. It was targeted to open in 2031, Brown said.
Dunedin-based Daniels said she had “very real concerns” it would not be fit for purpose for both health professionals and patients, as well as nursing and medical students needing work experience.
“So we’re not going to have the number of beds we need, we’re not going to have the hospital we need and the health professionals are going to have to do workarounds to try and do their job, just as they are now,” she told Kaitiaki.
The Government was again putting cost-cutting before health.
“We’ve got a growing older population here in the southern region and we can’t meet their needs now because we don’t have enough beds,” she said.
“Not significantly increasing the beds as per the plan means we will continue to fail to meet the needs of the people.”
‘At least we’ve got a shell of a building but it still represents a broken promise because they haven’t put everything in that they said they would.’
Fewer beds also meant fewer jobs and could impact on the ability of Otago’s medical and nursing schools to provide adequate clinical placements, she said.
“So it’s got major implications for everybody – the patients, the nurses, the doctors and the region.”
However, Daniels said she was pleased the Government had not opted to refurbish the current site, an “untenable” option that had also been on the table.
Former health minister Shane Reti and Minister for Infrastructure Chris Bishop had last year paused the hospital project, to review options claiming costs had blown out to $3 billion. It prompted huge protests in Dunedin, nurses calling it a “betrayal of trust”.
Today, Brown opted for a middle ground — fewer beds and operating theatres, but the same number floors — even if not all of them will be fit-for-use.
‘Victory for the people’
Long-time NZNO delegate Linda Smillie said she had “mixed emotions” at the decision.
“At least we’ve got a shell of a building but it still represents a broken promise because they haven’t put everything in that they said they would,” she said.
“But at least there wasn’t any major slash and burn. All the floors are there . . . we’ve got an answer, we’ve got the envelope and the potential.”
‘We’ve got a growing older population here in the southern region and we can’t meet their needs now because we don’t have enough beds.’
Smillie said the decision was a “victory for the people” and she thanked all the NZNO delegates behind a 35,000-strong petition to rebuild the hospital.
“This hospital would have been even more downsized if it wasn’t for the people,” she said. “35,000 people marched — and I think that well and truly put the Government on notice that we weren’t prepared to accept any significant downsizing.”
Smillie said if Labour won the next Election she would call on them to keep their promise to open the hospital, as originally agreed — as leader Chris Hipkins had recently confirmed at the Labour Party conference in Christchurch.
Nonetheless, protestors still swarmed Brown’s car as he tried to leave the project office. Members told Kaitiaki Brown had a dummy car in the carpark but another hidden inside the building with tinted windows which he came out in after making the announcement this morning.
Protestors standing in front of it were pushed back by police, including nurses. “There was a bit of a ruckus,” one said. “He wouldn’t speak to the people.”