This Saturday, August 14, the Minister of Public Works, Alfredo Moreno, together with the mayors of the communes of Providencia, Lo Barnechea, Vitacura, Las Condes and Peñalolén, visited the works of the new Hospital del Salvador and the National Institute of Geriatrics.
The authorities made a tour of the sites of more than 170 thousand square meters. The construction reaches an advance of 37.5% of the total works and in this meeting the minister and the councilors saw on the ground the coarse work already finished of both hospital centers, which today are in the stage of installation of partitions and tiles, among others.
“This hospital will be a very significant change in the health care of half a million people from eight communes who represent the mayors who are here today. We wanted to invite you to know and internalize what this hospital is, which already has a little more than 38% progress and will be ready in 2024, “said Minister Alfredo Moreno.
The head of the MOP highlighted the work being done at the national level in terms of health infrastructure.”” This hospital is not the only one we are doing, but on the contrary. In the Ministry of Public Works we are working, as in this hospital, in another 19 concessioned hospitals: 8 of them are already awarded and under construction, and another 6 are under tender. In the rest of the year we are going to put out to tender another 5 additional hospitals, therefore we are going to have 19 hospitals through a concessionaire. And along with that, we are building or have already finished 7 hospitals through public works. It is a total of 26 hospitals, an investment of 3 billion dollars in total, 4,000 additional beds for the health system,” he said.
For her part, Mayor Evelyn Matthei pointed out that “this hospital is really going to mean a care of another type, of another quality for all our users. We expect that with the increase in beds and surgery units, waiting lists will decrease dramatically. But, above all, patients are going to be treated in a pleasant, modern environment, as they should be.”
The new Salvador Hospital and Geriatrics Institute will provide 641 beds, 24 wards, 2 angiography rooms, along with 375 enclosures for consultation boxes and procedure rooms, among others. Thanks to these establishments, specialized care can be delivered in its Ophthalmology Unit (with the only Ocular Trauma Unit in the country), transplant unit and because it is the only Geriatric Hospital in Chile.
Regarding the generation of jobs that this work provides, it currently has 1,524 workers and it is expected that at its peak it will reach more than 2,400 direct jobs.
The fiscal public works began to be built in 2018 and from its inception a deadline of 40 months was set for its start-up, which according to the original contract estimated that it would be delivered in May 2023. Due to the delays caused by Covid, the CSSO concessionaire submitted a plan for the completion of works to the MOP for evaluation, with the aim of delivering the hospitals at least, on the original date.
“The pandemic hit us like all the players in the industry. There were days when the health crisis forced to close the works and a long period where we could work with only 40% of the staff, to meet the capacity. Thanks to the fact that we have applied a very strict health protocol, we have had no outbreaks and currently there are no lives to mourn,” said Alfonso Guerrero, Csso’s General Manager.
As a way to bring the future hospital closer to the citizens, the CSSO – in conjunction with the mayors – has developed a tour of the model of the hospital that will be moving from one commune to another from August 16 to December. This activity will start in the Municipality of Providencia.
