Dr Barnett, along with Sir Ian Taylor, retired consultant general surgeon Dr Mike Hunter and Dunedin health advocate Pete Hodgson addressed a crowd of about 1000 people at the Dunedin Town Hall last night.
Mr Hodgson told the crowd the cost sunk into the now dormant former Cadbury factory construction site had already reached $200million and additional costs due to inflation alone, since thousands protested in Dunedin’s streets seven weeks ago, today reached $6m.
Dr Hunter said the government’s argument if Dunedin’s hospital was built as promised, it would be the most expensive in the southern hemisphere also needed to be addressed.
"The first response is, that’s bull....," he said.
The new Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, was a $NZ3.5b project.
"Every new hospital built is likely to cost more than those that went before, and if there had been a coherent long-term programme of investment in hospital assets, rather than letting it all run down to the point of ruin, then we wouldn’t be having to do this all at once."
Dr Barnett said she had been involved in the project for seven years and now chaired the advisory group for clinicians and consumers.
Two years ago, the design was already cut back, including a staff facilities building and the hospital portion of the pathology labs.
"The long-term consequences of these decisions are still not resolved and the degree of savings is uncertain," she said.
Now again cuts were on the table and the two options the government was considering were to reduce the floor area of the under-construction inpatients building, or build a smaller new building on the old site and connect it to a refurbished ward block.
"As always, the clinical teams have responded with the willingness to engage, to help find solutions and to target sensible savings where patient safety can still be preserved.
Re-using the old hospital needed to be immediately discounted as it would deliver "a fragmented set of buildings that would be extremely difficult to staff, operate and maintain".
"Even when finally finished, the quality and safety of the care that we could provide would be compromised and it would be even worse during the decades of construction and refurbishment," she said.
"Overall, we are concerned that every day of delay and of re-litigating old decisions costs money."
Dunedin musician Robert Scott performed and Dunedin-raised broadcaster Kanoa Lloyd served as MC.
