It was March 2010 when the Southern District Health Board (DHB) first announced the upgrade of Lakes District Hospital.
At that stage it was to have been combined with a new Integrated Family Healthcare Centre.
That, however, stalled after questions were asked about whether it should be run by the DHB or a local charitable trust.
A ''Wakatipu Community Health Board'' was formed, aiming to take control by August 2010, but soon after an Independent National Health Board panel was appointed to make recommendations on how it should be done.
In August 2011 it recommended the hospital be retained and expanded.
It also dismissed the family health centre in favour of it being expanded into a ''health campus'', in partnership with the University of Otago.
It was not until August 2014 that the DHB unanimously endorsed that suggestion.
By that September it was off the cards because of the planned $300million rebuild of Dunedin Hospital - that figure is now estimated to be $1.4billion.
Then, in May 2015 the Ministry of Health appointed the Sapere Research Group to, again, consider how the hospital might be run by a community trust instead of the health board.
In August the following year its findings were publicly released, also rejecting a community trust model.
That came the same day the DHB announced the most recent upgrade.
The work was initially to have been staged over two years and the first stage was to have been completed this year.
However, resource consent to construct two new wings was not lodged until March.
That was granted, subject to conditions, last Thursday.
Work is expected to begin next month and ''most'' of the redeveloped areas are expected to be operational from ''around June 2019''.
