Centre to improve medical services

Photo / Sarah Ivey

A new training and innovation centre that opens today at Middlemore will look for answers on how the expanded hospital can cope when it reaches capacity - in two years.

The Counties Manukau District Health Board has spent more than $500 million in five years rebuilding and expanding Middlemore.

But it needs an alternative to hospital expansion, to cope with the expected wave of patients from an ageing population, increasing rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes, and expanding health technology.

"Our analysis said we had enough beds until 2015," said chief executive Geraint Martin. "We've just run the numbers again and demand is such that we are going to run out by 2013."

The new education and research centre, Ko Awatea, is a collaboration between the DHB, Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland University of Technology and Auckland University.

Its backers hope it will lead to South Auckland producing more of the nurses, doctors and other health workers it needs, rather than importing them.

It is also an innovation centre, where local experts will devise better, safer healthcare, and overseas experts will pass on their knowledge.

Counties Manukau is paying British and American groups for some of that knowledge:

* $1 million a year in a three-year contract with the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) based in Massachusetts, and

* $160,000 a year for two years to British company the Oxford Centre for Healthcare Transformation, whose director Sir Muir Gray is an expert in changing health systems.

The DHB paid $58,000 to send four senior representatives to the US to attend IHI conferences and meetings.

Mr Martin said the spending associated with the international partnerships and Ko Awatea overall was very small compared with the DHB's annual turnover of $1.3 billion.

The DHB already has a unit devoted to quality improvement. It is trying to reduce avoidable harms to patients - reducing hospital stays and saving money. The unit expects to save more than $6 million this year.

THE COSTS

* Construction and fit-out will cost $9.9 million and will be paid by Counties Manukau District Health Board.
* The 2011/12 operating budget is $12 million.
* DHB contributes 52 per cent to the operating budget. The rest comes from two universities and a polytech.