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The first of many construction contracts for the two main buildings in the new Dunedin Hospital complex is expected to be signed this month.
Details of the building time line and what services will be contained within the new hospital were revealed yesterday when a Cabinet paper on the project’s detailed business case was released.
It showed that the early contractor engagement contract for the inpatient building, which will involve the successful building firm in the design of the facility, is timed for May 2021.
The long-awaited business case document is still to be released, although Health Minister Andrew Little’s office indicated it would be made public, as other hospital planning documents have been.
The 77,591sqm inpatient building, planned to open in April 2028, will contain most of the services in the current hospital, including inpatient surgery, mental health services for older people, and an oncology inpatient unit.
Planners earlier, despite strenuous opposition, decided not to move the oncology department from its current building, which opened in 1993.
As previously revealed by the Otago Daily Times, the number of paediatric beds will decrease, although more beds will be available for most other services.
A primary birthing unit will also be in the building, despite the hope of some midwives that the facility would be off-campus.
A multi-faith centre is included in the scope of the inpatient building, but not a Christian chapel, as many religious leaders have strenuously lobbied for.
Whanau spaces, envisaged as areas where families of patients can stay while their loved ones receive treatment, are also in the scope; the Southern District Health Board has previously, and controversially, rebuffed a petition which called for a Ronald McDonald House to be built in Dunedin.
The Emergency Psychiatric Service is also in scope in the inpatient building.
The smaller outpatient building, expected to open in January 2025, will include a day procedures unit, planned radiology, specialist clinics and a day medical unit.
There will be 53 bays in the emergency department, well up from the 31 available in the cramped quarters the service operates from now.
There is also a substantial increase in intensive care beds and acute and elective operating theatres, although several of them will be built as shells which can be fitted out if need be.
Most services previously identified in the 2019 site master plan as being outside of the scope of the new hospital remain there, and are expected to still be provided from the old hospital once the new buildings open.
Those include sexual health, orthotics and prosthetics and the renal home training unit, and they have been joined by breast care and BreastScreen Aotearoa.
Planners hope a "health precinct" will spring up on spare land next to the new hospital and many of those out of scope services will relocate there.
Overall, the new hospital will have 421 overnight beds, fewer than were envisaged in the original site master plan.
"While the new hospital will be similar in size to the current hospital, the new hospital’s design and use of latest technology will mean greater efficiency, including patient flow around the hospital and better access to diagnostics and treatment spaces, reducing unnecessary delays," a ministry statement said.
The ministry said yesterday that information it gave Mr Little for a written parliamentary question, lodged by Dunedin National list MP Michael Woodhouse, which indicated that the new hospital would have 471 beds, had led to "confusion".
The ministry’s answer had added emergency department beds to the inpatient overnight beds figure and provided a total beds figure, a spokeswoman said.