shape our hospital
Help us open the doors to our future healthcare
By mid-2024, a new four-storey, $320M surgical and medical hospital building, called Tōtara Haumaru, will open on the North Shore Hospital campus. It will be New Zealand’s most modern, state-of-the-art, in-patient facility with eight operating theatres, 150 beds and four new endoscopy suites.
“The development of this new hospital facility for the Auckland region provides an exciting opportunity for Well Foundation to work with the community to help realise the full potential of our future hospital.”
David Downs, Well Foundation Board Chair
The new facility will provide capacity for North Shore Hospital to adopt a greater role in delivering in-patient medical and surgical services for the Auckland region over the coming decades.
The key principle in planning the new facility has been patient and whānau-centred design that supports modern models of care and in-built features that enhance the experience of patients, visitors and healthcare staff. Tōtara Haumaru will be where many of our community are cared for in years to come, for both medical care and planned surgical procedures.
In collaboration with those leading the planning for the new hospital facility, Well Foundation is helping make three special projects within the new facility possible; the healing garden, the da Vinci surgical robot, and the whānau rooms.
The three projects …
Hospital Healing Garden
With the support of the community, the feature-piece of the new hospital facility will be New Zealand’s first large-scale indoor healing garden. The 450m2 central space, overlooked by three levels of wards, will be transformed from an unusable, empty atrium shell into a beautiful green space, completely changing the atmosphere of the hospital and enhancing the wellbeing of thousands of patients, family and staff.
Well Foundation is leading this once-in-a-generation opportunity to come together as a community to create something special that will change the hospital experience for our loved ones for decades to come.
Robotic surgery
The da Vinci Robot is a robotic surgery system that offers a minimally invasive alternative to both open surgery and laparoscopy (keyhole) surgery. Because the da Vinci robot requires only a few tiny incisions and offers greater vision, precision and control for the surgeon, patients recover sooner and get back to daily life quicker.
However, the state-of-the-art technology costs close to $4 million, which is the main reason why the five da Vinci robots currently in use in New Zealand are all within the private healthcare system. At present, patients within the public health system cannot access the significant outcome benefits offered through the surgical approach, creating inequalities between those who can afford health insurance, or who can afford to pay the cost of private surgery, and the majority who cannot.
Well Foundation, thanks to the support of private donors, provided the seed funding towards the cost of purchasing the da Vinci surgical robot, for the benefit of public hospital patients for the first time in New Zealand.
Whānau rooms
The new hospital facility will contain five specially designed whānau rooms called Nohoanga Haumaru: a safe place for caring, where caring is shared by the whānau and the clinical team. These purpose-built rooms will provide a space for whānau who may, for example, be assisting with end of life or extreme care needs in the hospital setting. The rooms will provide whānau with a private, comfortable space where they are able to stay at all times to assist in caring for their family member but are also able to withdraw to provide the clinical team with room to do their job. These spaces are intended to be welcoming and comfortable for whānau of all cultures, including a small kitchenette, chairs and table, and room to sleep if that is required. They have an adjoining door directly into the patient room and a separate door from the ward corridor for whanau only. The space can accommodate a larger number of whanau that can fit in a standard patient room.
Thanks to the generous support of private donors this project has now been fully funded.
Our impact is only made possible through the following incredibly generous organisations:
