A computer simulation will be used to help medical staff at the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) work out how best to transfer patients from the existing hospital site to the new one next year.
“We’re out to tender at the moment for the computer simulation tool and that will give us the ability to model various scenarios,” new RAH program director Graeme McKenzie told 891 ABC Adelaide.
“It’s a reasonably complex exercise and quite a deal of logistics involved.
“We’re looking at … which clinical departments move and when they move, finding out where those bottlenecks are so that we can plan efficiently for the safe move of the patients.”
The new RAH is being built at the western end of North Terrace in the city and patients will have to be moved from the current site at the eastern end, about a kilometre away.
Mr McKenzie said the modelling would let staff decide whether to move multiple or single wards at a time.
He said a newspaper wrongly reported there would be a “mock patient transfer” organised along North Terrace.
“We’re not moving any patients, it’s all about the computer simulation tool,” he said.
The opening of the new RAH has been delayed by seven months and all patients are now expected to be at the new site by the end of November next year.
The original budget to build the new RAH was put at $1.7 billion, but the latest estimate is $2.1 billion.
On top of that will be the cost of shifting patients and equipment — and a payment of $34.3 million to the builders for site remediation due to contamination of the rail yards on which the new RAH is being built.