The organisation held a board meeting on Friday, at which the future of the project’s inpatient building was not on the agenda.
Consent has not yet been sought for the building, the centrepiece of the $1.47 billion development, as HNZ is trying to find cost savings to bring it closer to budget.
Those proposed cuts, which include shelling operating theatres and reducing adult inpatient beds to fewer than the present hospital has, were reported by the Otago Daily Times on Saturday.
HNZ chairman Rob Campbell said the health organisation’s infrastructure sub-committee was still considering what to do about the inpatient building.
"There is an ongoing conversation about that, as you would expect, as value management proceeds to look at the increase in costs that we are facing.
"It is a matter for discussion between the people locally and our national staff and the committee," he said.
"I can understand that uncertainty. It won’t go on any longer than we have to.
"We are trying to get movement forward as best we can but we simply can’t commit to commencing projects that we’re not reasonably certain of the cost outcome so we have to work through it consistently and we have to balance both the value management and the clinical needs raised by the people there."
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich said he was alarmed cuts to the size or scope of the new hospital had not been ruled out.
Otago required a hospital of sufficient size to both serve the needs of the population and complement the medical school.
"We are ardently opposed to any reduction in size of the new hospital," Mr Radich said.
"Any reduction in capacity would be illogical."
Dunedin National list MP Michael Woodhouse said no construction project had ever got cheaper while being delayed, and HNZ had to place detailed designs for the inpatient building out to tender now.
"The reality is that they will only know what the cost of stage 2 is once they have finalised designs and have put it out to tender," he said.
"There are always opportunities to value manage a project once the successful tenders are in, there are choices that can be made about materials and the critical path that control costs.
"There are good people on this project but they can’t do alchemy."
Last week the ODT was supplied a copy of the HNZ southern region staff response to the "value management" proposals to pare back the hospital budget.
The report said many of the suggestions were unworkable and would end up costing tax payers more and that further costs would be incurred by needing to outsource several services originally planned to be in the new hospital.
"Over time these costs could substantially, if not completely, cancel out the savings that have been made through this value management process," the report said.
"The reality of this result and the inherent risks in the equation may make Southern’s earlier proposal to retain current design and stage fit out of facilities seem appealing." — additional reporting Grant Miller
