The new nine-storey Critical Services Building at Canberra Hospital officially opened this morning.
“The Critical Services Building is the largest health care infrastructure project that has been undertaken by the ACT Government to date,” Chief Minister Andrew Barr said.
“With a bigger emergency department, an expanded intensive care unit, more operating theatres and extra treatment spaces, this major expansion to the Canberra Hospital will enhance our acute care services for Canberrans and those who live in the surrounding NSW region.”
“The opening of the Critical Services Building is a huge milestone for the ACT public health system and our entire community,” health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said. “It will help to meet the growing health needs of our city, attract health workers to the ACT, and provide staff, patients and families with a light and pleasant environment to work and heal.”
However, the Canberra Liberals said the hospital should have opened more than a decade ago: the ACT Government had first promised the hospital in 2012, and rescoped and promised it again in 2016.
“This is necessary and very, very critical infrastructure for the healthcare services that Canberrans need and deserve, and it has been delivered too late,” opposition leader Elizabeth Lee said. “It also has seen a blowout in the budget because it has been delayed significantly…
“So it’s all good for Andrew Barr to be standing there doing a ribbon cutting ceremony. But how does it help the Canberrans who have been waiting years on the wait list whilst this government neglected funding that was promised for health infrastructure so that they could enter into a political alliance with the Greens to pay for the tram?”
For instance, Ms Lee remarked, category two patients had waited more than two-and-a-half years for ear, nose and throat surgery when the clinically recommended time is 90 days. Children younger than five had waited for more than a year.
“It gives very, very little comfort to those Canberrans who have really paid the price whilst this government played around with funding the tram and ripping hundreds of millions of dollars out of planned health infrastructure. And like with any major infrastructure project that this government touches, once again, it’s over budget and it has been delivered late.”
Clinical services will begin on Saturday week, 17 August. Once opened, it will be known as Building 5.
Many acute care services across the campus will move into the building, including the Emergency Department; Intensive Care Unit; operating theatres and day surgery admission; in-patient cardiology services and cardiac catheterisation labs; medical and surgical inpatient units; medical imaging; and helipad.
The building will be Australia’s first all-electric hospital building, powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity, reducing its emissions impact by approximately 1,886 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.
