The unveiling of the government’s health infrastructure plan yesterday had some good news for the Southern district, even if the details are sketchy.
Health Minister Simeon Brown said the national plan identified more than $20 billion was needed to meet future health needs.
The plan is described as a long-term approach to renewing and expanding the country’s public health facilities. It shows the areas where investment is needed in physical infrastructure over the next 10 years but gives no indication of the sums likely to be involved in each instance.
Mr Brown has reiterated the government’s preference for delivering smaller, more manageable facilities in stages rather than single large-scale structures.
This cannot come too soon. In a 2020 national stocktake of hospital buildings around the country, which included 24 mental health units, Wakari was one of four in the worst ‘‘very poor’’ category.
Then in 2022 the Ombudsman, after an unannounced inspection of Ward 10A, described the situation as Third World and called for immediate action to prioritise a rebuild or redevelopment of the ward.
At that time Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said the ward had given him possibly the most concern of any facility his office had looked at.
It had been known for years the ward was unfit for purpose, with the Ombudsman describing it as such in a report following a 2014 visit.
The inaction over this has been scandalous, a blight on successive governments’ paucity of proper planning.
Also welcome in yesterday’s announcement - although, again, there is no detail about it - is the plan for a rural hub, which we assume would be in Central Otago.
Investment in that is planned for 2030 to 2034. Such sites are described as facilities which would provide access to care closer to home, with services reflecting local population needs.
We do not know how it will be decided where such a hub will be situated, but it would be unfortunate if it relied on whoever makes the biggest noise rather than on the most sensible option.
Mr Brown announced capping of the piles on the Dunedin hospital in-patient site will get under way mid-year.
This is good news, although we wonder whether there will be more delays on this job after that, given the advance notice of tenders for the building’s substructure only appeared on the Government Electronic Tender Service website yesterday.
That notice said piling work is mostly complete, and a separate contractor will be moving ahead of the substructure work completing the initial pile cap and basement perimeter construction work.
It is not clear to us when that separate contractor was engaged or how that process worked.
Mr Brown said the capping work would be followed by work on the perimeter of the basement to form the base for the substructure, then the installation of the base isolators and the frame of the main construction.
Two other sections of the plan featured Dunedin.
One was for replacement of Dunedin Hospital linear accelerators (LINAC) machines used for radiation therapy, but spending on these is not planned until after 2035.
The other involved car parking at the new Dunedin hospital. The new hospital is one of 11 sites where Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora is to approach the private sector for the provision of carparking. The number of parks has been specified for some hospitals, but not Dunedin’s.
How the government will involve private funders in its wider plan is not clear, nor how enthusiastic the wider public might be for that if taxpayers fear they may end up paying more in the long run.
It is not the first time a government has vowed to do better with long-term planning for hospital buildings.
The hope was the Labour-led government’s 2020 building stocktake would lead to a better national investment strategy.
Mr Brown, who made the plan announcement outside Manukau Superclinic with the encouraging sound of hammers banging in the background, may have some way to go to convince a cynical public his government will get it right this time.
