The new Tōtara Haumaru building at North Shore Hospital. Photo: Rowan Quinn / RNZ
North Shore Hospital's new $300m elective surgery building finally opened to patients on Monday, even though clinicians have not yet been recruited to staff it.
The 150-bed Totara Haumaru building has eight operating theatres and four endoscopy suites; it was officially opened by the Health Minister on Sunday.
Last month RNZ reported that effectively no extra patients would get surgery as a result of the new building opening, because theatres in other parts of the hospital had to close so it can be staffed.
Northern Region director for Hospitals and Specialists services, Mark Shepherd, said the new theatres would be initially staffed by existing clinicians who were already working on elective lists.
"Phase one is 'lift and shift', it's about embedding new processes and patient pathways, separating planned care from acute care, taking it out of the North Shore tower block and moving the bulk of it over to Tōtara Haumaru."
Recruitment had begun for 36 mainly non-clinical staff needed, including orderlies, receptionists, cleaners and security personnel, he said.
"We have a large number of contingency staff, a casual pool for existing services, and initially those support staff will come from this group, who already understand our policies and procedures, while we work to get that full complement of staff deployed in the organisation."
Services would actually begin to scale up in three months time with the start of Phase 2, bringing back in-house 2000 elective procedures currently outsourced to the private sector.
"That's about doing them more effectively and building our capacity inside the hospital."
Recruitment had yet to begin for 101 extra clinical staff needed for that.
"We've got another three months to be able to land that, but it's about to start."
While there were critical workforce shortages in several specialities, Shepherd did not expect North Shore would struggle to attract staff.
"This is the newest whizzbang facility in the Auckland region and probably across Health New Zealand generally, so I don't think we'll have a lack of interest of people wanting to work in that environment."
Hospital bosses planned to start rolling out Phase Three - adding another 3000 procedures - from April 1, 2025.
Tōtara Haumaru had been the first major project completed since the creation of Health New Zealand, the single biggest overhaul of the health sector in decades.
With the end of the previous funding model (district health boards) two years ago, it did require a fresh business case, discussions and reviews, but they finally "landed on an appropriate budget", Shepherd said.
"There were concerns from some staff around the change process, I think that comes form enthusiasm, because we're talking about a project years in the planning and making, beginning in 2015.
"But importantly, no patients have been delayed because of that. The Northern Region wait times are the best in the country and this is going to enable us to accelerate that."