Digital funding released for New Dunedin Hospital

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Phase one data and digital funding for the New Dunedin Hospital has been released following an independent review that says funding uncertainty was creating a risk to the workstream.

Cabinet commissioned a review of the New Dunedin Hospital (NDH) project which was completed in May this year by Robert Rust, former chief executive of Health Infrastructure New South Wales.

The New Dunedin Hospital Review found that the delivery of the NDH project as currently scoped and planned is probably not achievable within the approved budget.

The current scope includes the facilities, data and digital, and transformation workstreams. The approved budget for the NDH Facilities is $1.88 billion plus $225 million for data and digital.

The review recommends approval and the release of tagged funds for the data and digital implementation business cases (both digital infrastructure and software) should be progressed, saying “funding uncertainty and/or the timing of funding release is a risk to both the Data and Digital and Transformation workstreams”.

A Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora spokesperson says funding for the first phase of the data and digital workstream has been released and work is underway.

“When the outpatient building opens, modern digital infrastructure and solutions will be in place. This includes digital wayfinding services, patient check in kiosks, digital signage, and WiFi connectivity,” the spokesperson says.

“Building management functions will also be in place for the medical devices that will be used in the new facility, as well as updated electronic information portals for the community plus administrative and clinical users.”

“The digital solutions (both digital infrastructure and software) being implemented in Dunedin are foundational contributions to the national standard as part of the Digital Facilities Framework for Health NZ and are intended to be applied to other major projects such as Nelson and Whangārei hospitals.”

The review recommends that the scope of the NDH inpatient and outpatient buildings, including data and digital, should be “fixed as a matter of urgency and no further changes should be considered unless they are matters which would render the facilities no longer fit-for-purpose”.

Also, that responsibility for the wider workforce/system transformation and digital transformation should be clearly identified as being the responsibility of hospitals and specialist services (HSS) and digital and data senior management under a broader system-wide transformation initiative.

It says the project steering group should “only need to satisfy itself that those parts of the workforce/system and digital transformation that are necessary for the facility to operate effectively on opening have been provided, or a work-around is in place”.

The report says that data and digital was originally excluded from the NDH project, but a business case was developed and approved for the data and digital workstream in 2022 and funding of $225m was established in the Budget that year.

This included an operating contingency of $64m over the four years from 2022/23 to 2025/26 and a capital contingency of $161m in total. 

It says the scope of the preferred option was much broader than what was ultimately approved, which was the ‘minimum viable solution’. 

“The focus of the workstream to date has been on the Outpatient Building and it is understood that this is well developed and keeping pace with required progress,” the expert review says. 

“However, the scoping for Inpatients is less well developed, and will benefit from Outpatient Building reviews, issues resolution, and lessons learned.”

Health Minister Shane Reti said in July at a Digital Health Association event that the $225m data and digital fund for the NDH was being retained.

Picture: Artist’s impression of the New Dunedin Hospital

To comment on or discuss this news story, go to the eHealthNews category on the HiNZ eHealth Forum

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page