A revamp of southern mental health facilities has moved a step closer.
Contractors have been engaged by the Southern District Health Board to carry out site master planning, at both Southland Hospital, in Invercargill, and Wakari Hospital, in Dunedin, for inpatient mental health facilities.
"There were discussions last year about opportunities to access funding for significant remodelling of the services, to secure existing facilities as well as longer-term plans for new facilities," SDHB mental health and addictions executive director Toni Gutschlag said.
"No matter how much money we spend on the existing facilities we are never going to make them fit for purpose in a contemporary way."
The SDHB has been considering how to replace the collection of buildings which make up the Wakari complex for several years, and reviews it has commissioned are clear it needs major upgrading.
Many of the buildings are largely not fit for purpose, and staff have complained many are unsafe for themselves and patients.
In February, Ombudsman Peter Boshier released the findings of an unannounced audit of some of the wards at Wakari, which said Ward 10a did not meet the needs of the community, and that many of the shortcomings at Wakari identified in a 2014 audit had still not been addressed.
In its response, the Ministry of Health said it expected to receive an investment proposal to revamp Wakari.
The site planning work confirmed this week is an important early step before seeking government funding, and the SDHB is carrying out a similar exercise for all services at Southland Hospital.
"We have formally started connecting with the health infrastructure unit within Health New Zealand and we will be continuing those discussions," Ms Gutschlag said.
"It is a recent development."
A cross-sector group met in late February and set down several "principals of reinvestment" in mental health, which included that changes would reduce inequity, enable greater numbers of people to be supported, enabled earlier intervention and that they should be more effective than other service models.
SDHB chief executive Chris Fleming said there had been considerable cynicism about the organisation’s commitment to mental health but its commissioning and then vowing to implement the "Time For Change" review of region-wide services, was leading to improvement.
"It feels like in the last six months that we are starting to get some progress on some of these acute things, and while we can’t achieve everything before the end of June [when all DHBs are disestablished] on this front it feels like we are making irreversible improvement."
