Key infrastructure missing from Labor hospital plans

Birthing suites, mortuaries, pharmacies and theatres are missing from plans for several hospital developments, increasing the budget blowout by more than $6bn.

Minister for Health and Ambulance Services Tim Nicholls. Picture: Richard Walker

Birthing suites, mortuaries, loading docks and theatres are missing from the scopes of work in several hospital developments, increasing the budget blowout over $6bn, the Health Minister has revealed.

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Mail, Tim Nicholls, who has taken on the largest government portfolio overseeing about 130,000 staff, revealed he was handed a bleeding budget full of projects with incomplete plans.

The Courier-Mail on Friday revealed Labor had disguised a $1.37bn cost increase attached to six hospital expansions through revised scope of works.

It can now be revealed a further nine hospital expansion projects under the same program have ballooned to $5bn due to “unannounced increases in clinical scope”, bringing the total blowout figure to just under $6.4bn – enough to pay for a second Cross River Rail.

Those include the $1.3bn Toowoomba Hospital, which is missing cardiac services, birthing suites, dialysis and geriatric rehabilitation facilities, and the $1.1bn Redcliffe Hospital expansion, which is missing a pediatrics outpatients clinic and a mortuary.

Former premier Steven Miles with Yvette D’Ath and Shannon Fentiman at the start of construction on the Redcliffe Hospital expansion earlier this year. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The $530m Townsville University Hospital expansion is missing a pharmacy, loading dock, back-of-house services, linking bridge to the site, two theatres and a day medical centre.

With more than $11bn worth of projects in the pipeline, Mr Nicholls says he will have to work with Queensland Health to re-cost promises made under Labor, including the $20m spinal unit upgrade.

“My main concern is that commitments have been made that haven’t been funded,” he said.

“Or commitments that have been so hopelessly managed that we’re now finding out the true cost of them, and that’s really a very substantial part of what the job will be.

“There’s no doubt that (spinal) unit is inappropriate, it’s not fit for purpose … and I don’t think that the money put aside for it is going to be enough to fix it.”

Mr Nicholls said a combination of factors had led to the additional $5bn hospital expansion increase including the impost of BPIC obligations on major construction sites, material and supply costs, lack of fiscal prudence and “Labor’s failure to listen to clinicians and include required project components in the initial project plan or costings”.

He will rely on the suspension of BPIC to get future health projects over the line and “work with Queensland Health on managing the current position”.

“The blowouts are … across the board,” Mr Nicholls said.

“It’s like renovating an old Queenslander, every time you prise off another board, you find another problem.

“Two weeks into the job and I’m just adding it all up.”

Ambulance ramping is on the state government’s health hit list. File picture: David Clark

On top of attempting to deliver major health projects, including three new hospitals, 15 hospital expansions and the state’s first cancer centre on budget, Mr Nicholls has been given the near-impossible task of reducing the state’s record-level ambulance ramping rates to below 30 per cent within four years.

He will also be held responsible for “stabilising” the elective surgery waitlist which has ballooned to more than 64,000 people and reopening maternity services in Biloela and Cooktown.

Queensland will also need another 40,000 health workers by 2032 to care for the booming population which is forecast to grow 1.2 per cent annually.

Despite this, he remains optimistic all problems can be fixed through a methodical approach.

“A growing population, an ageing population, increasing rates of disease in ageing populations, increasing complexity of disease across all the population, increasing cost of medical intervention … ,” he said.

“I think if you break it down and address each of it in turn, sensibly, with compassion, with a bit of a clear thought process, it’s not that bad.”