Rebuilding plans: ‘All is not well’

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 6

Rebuilding plans: ‘All is not well’

Plans for the proposed $lOO million stage 3 redevelopment of Christchurch Hospital seem to have run into trouble. The chairman of the North Canterbury Hospital Board, Mr T. C. Grigg, has again criticised delays in the report of a special review committee on the redevelopment. The report is now in the hands of the Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm. “What I am trying to do is get people to realise all is not well at this stage,” Mr Grigg said last evening. The board had not seen the committee’s report, parts of which the Minister had said were not accept-

able to him and he wanted to study the report in more detail.

However, Mr Grigg said he had been told a “few things” when he and the board’s chief executive officer, Mr R. I. Parker, met the Minister in Wellington on Wednesday. He was now worried that there would be further delays in getting Government approval to continue planning the redevelopment. Some design features of the proposed new main building seemed to be causing the problem.

In a statement released earlier yesterday, Mr Grigg said that the board was the “poor relation” compared

with other centres which had modern hospitals and facilities. “If we do not obtain approval to replace our old sub-standard, and in some cases dangerous, hospital buildings, the future looks very grim,” he said. Representatives of the private health sector made up the special review committee. The costs of building and running a private hospital could not be compared with those of a public hospital, he said. Public hospitals had to provide a round-the-clock accident and emergency service, high-cost technology, and training for medical staff.