26 October 2018

The first three of 27 services will move into the new $72 million Christchurch Outpatient facility this weekend. From early this morning, Friday 26 October, staff from the Eye Clinic, Haematology and Pre Admission have been packing boxes even as Crown Relocation movers started dismantling the computer equipment and workstations around them.

Teams from Canterbury DHB’s Information Services Group will have a demanding weekend restoring and testing services to computers, phones, and equipment to ensure everything is up and running before the first patients arrive at the Eye Clinic on the afternoon of Monday 29.

The rest of the staged migration takes place from 2-5 November when Hagley Outpatients moves, and 9 -12 November when the Diabetes team leaves the Diabetes Centre.

The new Outpatients facility will be busy. Just over 300 staff will be working there and on average around 800 people per day will come in for appointments with the various specialist services that will soon be based there.

Volunteers will be available in the main reception to help patients navigate the building.

Canterbury DHB CEO David Meates says the amazing efforts by all involved need to be acknowledged.

“These moves to new state-of-the-art facilities are the culmination of years of work by teams of people, from users to architects, right through to construction contractors and our own project teams. We have a beautiful facility that is designed to be fit for purpose and deliver world leading health care services to our community.”

He also praised the tolerance and patience of health care consumers and staff alike. “It’s not easy to live in a city recovering from a major disaster and then to have so many obstacles in your way when you try and access services.

“We have continued to deliver high standards of care, while acknowledging that access to services in the health precinct has been and will be challenging for some time. People have been amazingly tolerant and patient, and it’s good to see that patience rewarded with the opening of the new Outpatients.”

“We want to acknowledge the amazing efforts by everyone who helped get this facility ready.”

The Christchurch Outpatients building is five storeys high and provides 10,500m2 of state-of-the-art facilities for 27 different services that have been brought back under one roof after being dispersed widely across the hospital campus and the city since the 2011 earthquakes.

Dr Rob Ojala, Canterbury DHB clinical lead for facilities redevelopment, says the emphasis for the new facility is to support integrated specialist community care.

"This will help patients gain access to the specialist care they need outside of the more traditional hospital-based care environment," Dr Ojala says.

“It’s been a long journey to get here and I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Board and Hospital Redevelopment Partnership Group for their ongoing support. We are really pleased with what we have achieved and look forward to being able to deliver even higher standards of care, with the patient at the centre as always.”

ENDS

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