Hospital offering rooms with a view

By MARTIN JOHNSTON, health reporter

If you're ever admitted to Auckland City Hospital and given a choice, ask for a bed on the northern side.

It offers views of the Waitemata, Rangitoto Island and inner city - interrupted only by the Starship hospital's newly cream-coloured walls.

In contrast, the southern side has a gloomier outlook over streets, motorways, rooftops - and the concrete-grey medical school.

The $200 million hospital, which receives its first patients on Saturday, will eventually cater for about 810 patients.

It is arranged into 26-bed wards, but in quieter periods such as the Christmas holidays, doors will be opened between wards and they will be managed together as "pods".

Level six contains 208 beds in eight wards ranging from cancer to infectious diseases.

"This is the size of a district general hospital," said building programme general manager, Nigel Murray.

The Grafton building, which will combine the inpatient services of Auckland, Green Lane and National Women's Hospitals, will have nearly one-third of its beds in single rooms.

"There will be 50 per cent more single rooms in the new hospital than at present," said Dr Murray. Deficit-plagued Auckland District Health Board had asked the public how they wanted the beds arranged.

They wanted all single rooms, but Dr Murray said that the board could not afford to comply.

"It would have been very expensive because of the plumbing and toilet systems and it's not an efficient use of space.

"We then asked, 'Would you like to have doubles?' and the preference was, 'No, we would rather have quads'.

"It's a greater level of anonymity when you have four rather than two."

However, mothers voted for two-bed rooms as their second preference, so maternity wards have a mix of doubles and singles, and general wards have quads and single rooms.

The single and double rooms each have an en suite shower/toilet, and the quads have a shower and a toilet in separate en suite rooms.

The bedroom floors are timber-look vinyl, for easy cleaning. The corridors are carpeted, for greater quietness and comfort.

Beyond the wards, most of the nine levels are built around an end-to-end "main street", which each contain a bridge offering giddy views into an open, eight-level high atrium.

What's happening

Auckland Hospital is taking over inpatient services from National Women's and Green Lane in a $200 million project. Day surgery and most outpatient clinics will be at the new Greenlane Clinical Centre.