Photo: 123rf
Te Whatu Ora is poised to introduce a new approach to handling earthquake risks at its 1200 hospital buildings.
It was told by engineers last year that a lot of key information was missing, and a lot of the approaches taken by the district health boards for years did not match up.
In fact, 40 of its highest importance buildings did not even have a seismic assessment, and overall a third of buildings lacked one, the report in mid-2022 found.
In the intervening 18 months, it had gathered up seismic assessment data from the districts, the agency told RNZ on Wednesday.
"Te Whatu Ora has developed a seismic policy to be used across the public health estate," head of land and property management Monique Fouwler said in a statement.
"This policy is to be presented to the ... board this month and we expect to publish this online in early 2024."
A risk management strategy was being worked on.
Also, Te Whatu Ora was finalising seismic technical guidelines and procedures for what to do after a big earthquake, along with risk guidance for planning major hospital developments.
Hospitals have had a piecemeal approach to quakes, leading to differences in the importance level they attach to buildings, in how they assess how strong they are, and in what ways they go about getting weaker buildings up to standard.
The entire field of seismic assessment and design is a moving one, with the methodologies changing in big ways since the 2016 Kaikōura quake.
Just last year an update to the national seismic hazard model was adopted. It concluded the chances of the ground shaking more violently was much higher than previously thought for large parts of the country.
