Hospital building ‘to cost $5OM’

Press, 11 February 1981, Page 6

Hospital building ‘to cost $5OM’

Replacement of old buildings at Christchurch Hospital would cost more than $5O million, said the Minister of Health (Mr Gair) in Christchurch yesterday. It was the first time that an official announcement had been made on the estimated cost of completing! the redevelopment of the hospital, which is expected to take up to 15 years. Mr Gair was opening the new administration building | of the North Canterbury Hospital Board in Oxford Terrace. The building, which is owned by the T. and G. Mutual Life Society, is being ; leased by the board. . The replacement of old buildings at the hospital was the principal part of the board’s building programme,

which at today's prices', would cost between $5O million and S6O million, Mr Gair said. “Clearly this cannot all be accommodated at once. There will be a need to set priorities, and to spread out the development programme over a period. Progress will continue to be made, but it may be made more slowly than in the economically more buoyant years.” When many of the re- • placement buildings_ were first planned about 15 years i ago they were initially de- ■ signed tq meet a projected ] increase in population that had not eventuated, Mr Gair 1 said. : “In the process,. we 1 created a bow wave of capi- i tal-servicing commitments 1 which have been devouring <

I' more and more of the resources available. “It is only now that we are really coming to financial grips with this ‘bulge’ and are beginning to digest the cost of the many buildings planned a decade or more ago.” The chairman of the board, Mr T.C. Grigg, said that the new administration building, which has cost the board about $500,000 in furnishings and equipment, would help to break down the isolation suffered for many years by 17 branches of the board’s administrative: personnel. In undertaking a lend-: lease agreement with the T. and G. Mutual Life Society,! the board had broken new! ground in hospital administration in New Zealand, he; said.