$5.5M plan gets nod

Press, 3 August 1983, Page 1

$5.5M plan gets nod

Government approval has been given to call tenders for a $5.5 million department of physical medicine at Burwood Hospital. The Minister of Health, Mr Malcolm, announced the Cabinet decision yesterday. Plans for the department have been on the North Canterbury Hospital Board’s books since 1971 and the completion date is at least another two years away. The single-storey building will include a gymnasium, hydrotherapy pool, treatment area for speech therapy and physiotherapy, and an occupational therapy department with training and workshop areas. The hospital’s medical superintendent, Dr R. H. Claridge, said it was good news. The present facilities were poorly housed and there was no real place for work and recreation programmes.

“At the moment occupational therapy is in some old post-war Army huts,” he said. “The physiotherapy department is also overtaxed.” Workshop and kitchen facilities to use in rehabilitating spinal injury patients and others were particularly needed. The board planning officer, Mr E. R. Bennett, said it would take at least another three months to call tenders and get final Government approval. First staff had to check that the plans, put aside when the proposal was submitted to the Government in November, 1981, were up to date. The department would take about two years to build, he said. The competitive state of the building industry and stable building costs might mean that tenders were close to the 1981 estimated cost of $5.5 million.