There has been a mixed response to the announcement of a private hospital to arrive in Dunedin.
The three-storey hospital is hoped to be ready by 2028, about three years before the expected completion of the $1.8billion new Dunedin hospital inpatients building.
Social media has been flooded with responses to the news, some welcoming it as a way to address shortages in the health sector, others more suspicious of the private provision.
But project director Colin Hutchison, who has experience in both public and private health, said the private hospital’s role would be "complementary".
"I’ve already had a fantastic response from colleagues within the health sector who have just heard about this.
"This project is all about expanding options in healthcare [in Dunedin]."
Former head of the Dunedin hospital emergency department Dr John Chambers was circumspect.
"We already have a large private hospital in Mercy Hospital, and a variety of private health offerings."
Dr Chambers said the plans for expanded private provision "clearly extend well beyond the term of the current government so investors must think current trends will persist".
"But there will come the time when they will be under pressure of meeting costs, delays and complications from grumpy patrons — let’s hope a well-run day surgery service in the new Dunedin hospital restores some balance."
Mercy Hospital declined to comment.
Labour MP for Taieri Ingrid Leary said the new Dunedin hospital would become the backbone of health services for the entire lower South Island.
"If the government uses a new private hospital as an excuse to keep cutting back public facilities or outsource electives, people across the whole region will pay the price.
"Private hospitals cherry-pick easy cases and specialists, leaving public hospitals with the hardest work and the longest waits.
"It’s regional and rural people — already facing some of the biggest access challenges to healthcare — who stand to be even more disadvantaged from this entrenchment of private healthcare as the new normal."
Labour MP for Dunedin Rachel Brooking hoped the government did not take construction of a new private hospital as a signal that it could "further scale back much-needed public facilities at the future Dunedin Hospital".
"We would be concerned if the government relies on this private hospital to outsource elective surgeries in the long term, as it is currently trying to do without telling the public how much this is costing and without accountability."
But Mr Hutchison said he saw a lot of synergies.
"The public hospital will always be able to deliver things that private healthcare cannot.
"At the end of the day, it’s about the patients in the community."
