A replacement for the Repatriation General Hospital’s palliative care unit will be built at Flinders Medical Centre, the State Government has announced.

A 55-bed rehabilitation centre containing the 15-room palliative on its fifth floor is set to be constructed on the Flinders site.

The building is designed to replace the bulk of the Repat’s rehabilitation services and all of its palliative care services after the hospital’s closure.

SA Health Chief Medical Officer Paddy Phillips said the new palliative care facilities would be an improvement on the Repat’s palliative care unit, Daw House Hospice, which was built in 1988.

“The current facilities are no longer suitable for modern day palliative care, which has advanced significantly over the past 30 years,” he said.

Phillips chaired the SA Health committee – comprising doctors, nurses, consumers and non-government service providers – that recommended Flinders as the site for the new centre.

The service director for Southern Adelaide Palliative Services, Kate Swetenham, said the new centre would provide the care patients and their families had come to expect from Daw House.

“While some people may have an emotional attachment to Daw House, most patients and families tell us the most important thing to them is the care we provide,” Swetenham said.

All staff currently working at Daw House, she said, would transfer to the Flinders Medical Centre site.

A rendering of the facility’s roof-top garden.

A new, multi-storey car park is also planned, adjacent to the new building, adding nearly 700 new car parks to the site.

However, 600 car parks will be made unavailable to staff during construction, which is set to begin in 2016 and end during the following year.

“That’s a real concern,” said South Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Association (SASMOA) senior industrial officer Bernadette Mulholland.

“To date … we have got no clarification as to what that means, in a site that already struggles with car parking for both clinicians and consumers.”

According to SA Health, “a number of options are being examined” to allow staff to park their cars while the building is being constructed, including using parking at the nearby Flinders University outside of student terms, as well as “park-and-ride” facilities.

An SA Health spokesperson said options for staff car parking during construction were in the early stages of development, but that public buses could be used to take staff from a “nearby” car-parking site to the hospital.

InDaily understands the old Mitsubishi site on South Road, dominated by Tonsley TAFE campus, is a likely candidate for the park-and-ride facility.

Mulholland also questioned whether services connected to the palliative care unit currently operating at the Repat – including outpatient and pharmacy services – would be made available at the new facility.

InDaily understands that existing pharmacy services at the Flinders Medical Centre are expected to be adequate, but the details of connected outpatient services are yet to be decided upon.

The nurses’ union “broadly welcomed” the new palliative care centre’s Flinders location.

“While we recognise the decision to move palliative care services from the Repat is still a source of concern and distress for many, moving to a new building at the Flinders Medical Centre, complete with a rooftop garden, is a much better option than relocating palliative care to the Noarlunga Hospital, adjacent to a shopping centre car park,” SA CEO of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Elizabeth Dabars said.

Dabars said the union would work with the State Government to ensure parking facilities were adequate during construction.

InDaily understands Flinders Medical Centre was over-capacity with patients yesterday, and staff were asked to facilitate patient discharge where appropriate.

Meanwhile, activists protesting against the closure of the Repat today celebrated their 150^th day occupying the steps of parliament house.