Hours after the DHB unveiled its new health care model for an "integrated family health centre" on March 3, the medical centre and Remarkables Park Ltd announced they were "forging ahead" with the complex, which gained resource consent in 2009.
However, more than seven months later, and after the NHB panel recommended the Lakes District Hospital site be developed as a health campus, development manager Dr Hans Raetz said the private hospital was on "indefinite hold".
"Due to the two-year delay that we have had now through DHB processes, the Southern Cross hospital option has become very questionable, the private radiology group investment into Queenstown is very much in question and we are fighting for a CT scanner and possibly surgical services that we had secured two years ago."The facility was now more likely to be developed on hospital land rather than at Remarkables Park.
He could not see a park facility being able to exist in competition with the hospital, he said.
"The whole push for us was to get the synergies of public and private together to work hand-in-hand, and when the hospital board decided they wanted to look at relocating the hospital, [that] is now completely off the cards, if you read the NHB recommendations.
"I want services here, and because the health board wasn't moving, we pushed the whole thing on the private side.
"If these guys were not going to do it, what sort of private service do we have to develop to get the CT scanner here? ... with the help of Remarkables Park developers, we had a model that was standing on its own two feet and could have worked.
"The problem was at that stage the National Health Board took over the whole thing and then dropped the bombshell that Lakes District Hospital was essential unsellable.
"Well, that kind of put the kibosh on anything we were doing."
Dr Raetz said the medical centre was interested in developing on the hospital site, but would wait until the new and independent Wakatipu Heath Reference Panel was formed and heard what its members wanted to do and get involved in the discussion, he said.
"We clearly run the only A and M [accident and medical acute services] in Queenstown.
"We have been asked to look at possibly doing something similar on the hospital side."
Dr Raetz said centre directors did not want to move from central Queenstown to the hospital in Frankton, because of the inconvenience for patients who lived in town.
"However, I do appreciate that the hospital board wants to have some kind of urgent GP drop-in type facility at the hospital as well to make it easy for patients to attend one facility.
"We would certainly look at developing that if that was the wish of the community and it stands up commercially.
"In the future, I could certainly see a development together with the community out of Lakes District Hospital, combining public-private outpatients.
"It makes a lot of sense.
"QMC has been pushing along to get some kind of private surgical services set up [and] outpatient clinics established in Queenstown for ages.
"We've got about 30 outpatient clinics compared to the five or six the hospital is doing on the public side, which is just ridiculous.
"We've always been pushing the DHB to get some more public appointments here in Queenstown so people don't have to constantly pay for stuff.
"That's hopefully going to get implemented now."
How much private health sector money and where should it come from were questions which needed to be asked, he said.
Land locked
The value of the land occupied by the Lakes District Hospital is $6 million, according to the Southern District Health Board (DHB).
The National Health Board (NHB) Report of the Wakatipu Health Services Expert Panel said the land was made up of 13 separate parcels, between Lucas Pl to the east and Kawarau Rd to the west.
The opinion there would be "considerable impediments" to the sale of much of the land was a factor in the panel's recommendation to the DHB the hospital stay where it was.
It was believed some sections were given with the covenants the land would be used only for a hospital or for health care and would have to be given back to the original owners if the sections were to be sold for another purpose.
Untangling the covenants would have been expensive and taken 10 years in courts, making the feasibility of selling hospital land impossible, Dr Hans Raetz said.
Southern DHB planning and funding general manager Robert Mackway Jones said a trust or group had not been established to develop vacant hospital land.
"Site development interest will be co-ordinated through myself as part progressing service development.
"The detail of land availability will be advised in due course.
"Parties wishing to discuss future service development in Queenstown can contact me in the first instance, as there are a number of issues and recommendations to be worked through."
