Vow to deliver preliminary hospital business case by end of year
A FUTURE plan for Nepean Hospital will be presented to Treasury this December. It follows the release of data showing it has the longest emergency department wait times in NSW.
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A FUTURE plan for Nepean Hospital will be presented to Treasury this December, the Penrith Press can reveal.
Health Infrastructure senior project director Bruno Zinghini said the preliminary business case would be ready by the end of this year.
Health Infrastructure builds NSW hospitals and will overseas the Nepean Hospital stage four upgrade.
The NSW Government government has promised $4 million in planning money over four years.
The very next thing that needs to be agreed on is a clinical services plan — that tells us what is actually required for the project,” Mr Zinghini said, adding “re-purposing is a big thing.”
He said scoping for the redevelopment is drawn from the Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District Asset Strategic Plan 2013-2023, which shows were the hospital can’t cope and how to treat the growing number of patients to 2022, including the need for more than 120 additional inpatient beds.
The emergency department is overloaded, seeing 67,000 people a year — a 30 per cent increase over five years. The ED was designed to handle 50,000 a year.
“There is no such thing as a cookie-cutter hospital,” Mr Zinghini said.
“Once we document how (the clinicians and services) operate — the ‘functional brief’ — then we go into the schematic design phase ... how it looks on paper.”
The plan will look at how the hospital can be integrated with other community health services in Penrith and St Marys, how to repurpose existing buildings on campus including whether services can be relocated, and how to activate the surrounding suburb of Kingswood and its railway station.
“We will do a travel and access plan, to see how we best engage with the key modes of transport, and we will put together an art strategy,” Mr Zinghini added.
“We really want a patient-centric design (to create) a feeling of wellness.”
Among the ideas is coloured corridors — red for the clinicians, and blue for the public.
Premier Mike Baird acknowledged healthcare was a “difficult area ... there’s more to do” and singled out Nepean Hospital in his State of the Region address to the Western Sydney Business Council on Friday.
His comment follow the release of the latest Bureau of Health Information data which show Nepean Hospital patients experienced the longest wait times in NSW for both emergency department admissions and elective surgery, from April to June 2016.
The report showed 51.8 per cent of ED patients at Nepean Hospital waited longer than the national benchmark of four hours before being seen.
The wait for surgery at Nepean Hospital is longer than any other hospital in NSW, with one in five patients waiting longer than clinically recommended, the data showed.
“This independent report proves that Nepean Hospital is the most under-pressure hospital in NSW,” said Lindsay Labor MP Emma Husar.
In August, Federal Labor yet again promised to fully fund the stage four $370 million upgrade to Nepean Hospital, but Penrith state Liberal MP says they only have themselves to blame for the hospital being under pressure.
“Nepean is under some stress at the moment — it’s exactly what happens when you don’t plan for population growth properly,” Mr Ayres told NewsLocal.
“That’s what the Liberal Government inherited from Labor.
“I will take the heat politically in the short term in terms of the capacity of Nepean Hospital, to get it right in the long term.”
Commenting on the delivery time frame for the project, Mr Zinghini said he has a proven track record of delivering projects on time.
These include the Stage 3 $139 million redevelopment of Nepean Hospital, and Stage 3A — Nepean Hospital’s $44 million mental health facility, $20 million carpark and the $8 million improvements to oral health services.
“When we did East Block we increased the theatre capacity by six theatres,” Mr Zinghini said.
“We kept all the theatres operational though the whole process.”
2016 PLANNING TIMELINE
■ July: Stage 4 design team formed
■ Clinical and stakeholder consultation
■ On-site masterplanning to work out site capabilities, and develop “physical” options list
■ Internal consultation on a “preferred option”. Concurrent stakeholder engagement, including with adjoining hospitals
■ December: Preliminary business case submitted to NSW Ministry of Health
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