Friday 17 August 2012
New Rotorua Hospital Entrance Opens Next Week
The entrance to Rotorua Hospital shifts from the current temporary entrance, overlooking Kuirau Park, to the new entrance built where the former Edward Guy Building stood on Tuesday 21 August at 8am.
All patients and visitors coming to Rotorua Hospital will enter by the new main entrance, from Tuesday morning. When the new entrance opens on Tuesday 21 August, the current interim entrance will be closed.
All patients and visitors will enter through the new main entrance off Pukeroa Street and once inside, will go left to the Emergency Department, or straight ahead to the new building for outpatient services or all other clinical services.
People turning into the new entranceway off Pukeroa Street can stop on the road that leads under the covered entrance way to drop off or pick up patients. This is a 15 minute drop off area, and after that time, drivers can expect to be moved on.
Parking for the hospital site is being changed around, with main parking for the public and visitors in the big car park next to the Renal Unit, overlooking Lake Rotorua. Staff currently parking there will be moved to the parking area below the Laboratory, and to the area outside Bridgman South Building, which is where ED patients are parking, up until the interim entrance is closed.
There is plenty of disability parking outside the new entrance for disability card holders. Additionally, those people who come to the hospital on mobility scooters, will be able to park their mobility scooters directly outside the main entrance. Attendants who are located at the entrance will be able to offer help with wheelchairs to get the drivers of mobility scooters into the building and where they need to go. Security and attendants will manage the front entrance from the Security and Attendants’ Office, at the front of the new building.
The bus route will alter with the Cityride buses once more coming through Pukeroa Street, with the stops close to the pedestrian crossing on the stretch of road by the new three-level building, across from what will be the main patients and visitors carpark.
Since the new building Whakaue Rauoranga opened a year ago, patients and visitors have had to trek from one side of the hospital complex through to the Emergency Department, to the Ambulatory Centre for outpatient services, and to the new hospital wards on levels 1 and two of the new building.
The design for Rotorua Hospital’s redevelopment required the demolition of Edward Guy Building before the final touches to the new building could be made. Edward Guy Building started life in the 1960s as a maternity building, but was the base for back office services and some outpatient clinics for the past decade. Staff moved out late last year prior to the building being demolished to make way for the new hospital entrance.
Opening the new main entrance will enable everyone to see the rest of the Maori artworks created for the building, Whakaue Rauoranga. Early in the project key Lakes DHB staff met with iwi to gain their support and direction. An arts committee was established to lead the development and to ensure that the culture recommendations set down in the Cultural Values Assessment for the redevelopment, came to fruition in the new hospital building.
The main entrance window to the new building features a drawing depicting a Maori man and woman in traditional dress are either side of a child. The placement of this drawing in the main entrance is important in terms of the DHB’s links with its community, whanau, hapu and iwi.
The automatic doors at the front entrance feature a wheku or mask representing the head, which is regarded as the repository of knowledge and wisdom. When the doors open the wheku separates into two profiles depicting Ranginui, the Sky Father and Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother.
The carved pou and kowhaiwhai panels that make up the four pillars in the atrium of the new building underline the importance that Pukeroa Hill holds for the people of Ngati Whakaue and Te Arawa.”
The collection of art works and kowhaiwhai panels that form four stunning pillars in the new building capture the important relationship between Lakes DHB and iwi, in particular Ngati Whakaue who gifted the land for the purpose of delivering health services as part of the Fenton Agreement.
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