The State Government will spend an extra $176.6 million on the transition from the current Royal Adelaide Hospital to the new facility – both of which will operate in tandem for more than two months.

Health Minister Jack Snelling announced the extra money this morning as he confirmed that the opening of the new RAH would be delayed until the second half of 2016.

The $1.85 billion new RAH is contracted to be completed in April 2016, but Snelling said today that an independent review of the project had concluded that date had slipped to the second half of 2016.

He said the current hospital and the new RAH would run in conjunction for about 73 days.

He said the decisions to run the hospitals concurrently and to allocate new funds had both been made to ensure the wellbeing of patients during the transition.

“Making the move from the current Royal Adelaide Hospital to the new hospital is a highly complex and intricate process, and we need to get it right,” Snelling said.

“Our priority is the wellbeing of our patients, and making sure they’re suitably cared for during the transition and that is why we have invested an additional $176.6 million.

“That is also why we expect to have two hospitals running in conjunction for more than two months.”

Snelling told a press conference this morning that “this is the most complex transition, most complex project the state has ever undertaken”.

Snelling defended the increase in funds: “This (new funding) covers things we can’t possibly have quantified ten years ago when we first started,” he said.

He said the 73-day overlap was designed to smooth out any issues.

“This will give us the flexibility that we need to deal with any eventuality, including us taking possession of the hospital in late winter or early spring,” he said.

“No change has been made to the contract, and whenever the new hospital is delivered, we’ll be ready.”

Snelling said that while the consortium was still insisting the hospital would be delivered by April 2016, the independent review had found otherwise.

He said any payment from the construction company in the event that the hospital is delayed – as the review says – would “depend on the extent to which… blame can be shifted, apportioned to the government, for any delays”.

New RAH program director Andrew Nielsen said the project team needed to make sure the hospital was fitted out appropriately and staff trained in the new environment before patients were “gradually moved across”.

“We have one chance to get this right,” he said.

“We’ve looked at other hospitals which have recently opened, both in Australia and across the world, to learn the lessons of their transitions.”

He said both the current RAH workforce and temporary staff would be needed to run the hospitals concurrently, but that the number of temporary staff needed wasn’t yet known.

Despite the problems which have plagued the e-health patient records system, EPAS, Neilsen said “we will have ICT working in the new hospital,” but that, as InDaily reported earlier this month, contingency plans were being set up in case problems with the system could not be fixed in time.

He said the transition funding covered the move to the new building as well as new technology, including the electronic patient record system, EPAS.