shape our hospital
You have helped us open the doors to our future healthcare.
A new four-story, $320M surgical and medical hospital building, called Tōtara Haumaru, opened on the North Shore Hospital campus in July 2024. It is 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 who led the planning for the new hospital facility, Well Foundation has helped 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 is New Zealand’s first large-scale indoor healing garden. The 450m2 central space, overlooked by three levels of wards, has been 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 led this once-in-a-generation opportunity to come together as a community to create something special that will improve the hospital experience for loved ones for decades to come.
Now the Healing Garden is installed, the plants need to be professionally maintained to ensure that plants remain healthy and that the impact is sustained for all future users. As the plants are indoors, they require maintenance from qualified experts who ensure that the plants continue to thrive in the artificial environment. Well Foundation will continue to financially support the ongoing maintenance of the Garden to ensure that it continues to improve the healthcare experience for all of our community.
If you would like to contribute to the Garden’s ongoing maintenance, you can do so here:
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.
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.
Our impact is only made possible through the following incredibly generous organisations:
