Plans for resuscitating the second stage of Dunedin Hospital’s problem-plagued new intensive care unit are close to being completed.
Almost 18 months after the unit was to have opened, the 10 extra ICU beds built as the second phase of a much-needed $14.8million modernisation of the hospital’s critical care facilities remain unused due to issues with the building’s ventilation system.
The Southern District Health Board has been in negotiation with the firms involved in the project about how to resolve the longstanding issue, one which has been made more urgent by the potential need to isolate any possible Covid-19 patients should the virus reappear in the South.
Board finance, facilities and procurement executive director Nigel Trainor said the organisation was working with contractors on a remediation plan for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system for the new ICU.
"We are working on how we get this completed during a lockdown and within a working hospital," he said.
"The emphasis is on getting a system that works so we can get this new ICU open."
Similar issues also briefly delayed the opening of the first stage of the new ICU, a far more modern facility than the cramped quarters seriously ill patients were previously treated in.
The ward is required to have its air changed 14 times an hour, but the elderly ventilation system in the present hospital has regular drops in pressure and cannot achieve that requirement.
"The original design which connected the new floor to the existing systems, for a number of reasons, has not provided adequate air turns for an ICU environment," Mr Trainor said.
"The plans are close to being completed.
"... there is also some remedial work of a very specialist nature that needs to happen before the new system is constructed."
Resource consent has been granted for the new unit to take critical patients in an emergency, if needed.
