Heart unit deadline hopes diminish
Health reporter Hopes that Christchurch’ will get its proposed $2 million open-heart unit by 198081 have faded. Full sketch plans for the unit, which will be built on the roof of the Princess Mar-: garet Hospital, were sent to the Health Department by the North Canterbury Hospital Board in March,'but the board has not yet received any money to allow it to put the unit on next year’s building programme. The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said in October, 1977, when he opened the Christchurch Hospital’s new clinical services block, that the heart unit would probably be commissioned in 1980-81. However, it is most unlikely that this target will be achieved, because it does not match the time scale noted
in Parliament late last month \ by the Minister of Health (Mr Gair) in answer to a! question by the member ofj Parliament for Lyttelton I (Mrs Ann Hercus). Mr Gair said that “when! various questions have been resolved, the matter could, then be referred to the Hos-j pital Works Committee.” This time, scale would take 15 months, allowing 12 months for working drawings and putting the proposal up for tender, and another three months for final Cabinet approval of the tender. The Hospital Board has already said that it would take 18 months to build the units after final Cabinet approval, so even if finance became available early next year, the unit could not be commissioned before 1982. A key factor affecting the future of the Christchurch! heart-unit proposal is the outcome of an assessment of
the workloads of all heart; units in New Zealand, which is being done in six-monthly cycles by the Health Department in Wellington. This monitoring exercise completed its first assessment in September, but the results have not been disclosed. The Christchurch Cardiac Companions’ Association this week expressed “deep concern” about what it called the “political duck-shoving” over the proposed heart unit. Mr N. W. Colombus, secretary of the association, said last evening that continual deferment of a decision on the unit was another example of the South Island’s being “stalled off.” The monitoring of all heart units would show beyond doubt that the Dunedin unit was not viable without the Christchurch patient workload, he said.
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Press, 28 November 1979, Page 6
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374Heart unit deadline hopes diminish Press, 28 November 1979, Page 6
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