Not until mid-2025

Böhler replacement: more expensive and later than expected

The parking garage is to make way for containers.(Bild: Martin Jöchl)

For a long time, AUVA has been beating around the bush about the interim container solution for the half-closed Böhler hospital, but now the die is cast: In September, the excavators are to drive up to Brigittenau and completely tear down the existing parking garage to make room for an entire hospital in container construction.

This will be equipped with three operating theaters and "up to" 60 normal and six intensive care beds. Instead of the previously promised start of operations at the beginning of 2025, the new target is now "realistically" mid-2025.

The cost estimates now also seem more realistic: According to the latest estimates, the container hospital will cost over 53 million euros - a good third more than had been hoped. This probably also explains the AUVA's previous reluctance to get down to business with the Böhler replacement solution.

(Bild: Lukas Zimmer)

An entire hospital in containers
In this respect, however, things are now looking good: The containers are also to contain an empty floor, where everything that will remain in operation in the old hospital building for the time being can be relocated: Outpatient clinic, physiotherapy and diagnostics, from X-ray to CT to MR.

This means that the entire hospital will be united in the containers from mid-2025, which will make it easier to demolish the existing hospital - and at the same time increase the chances that the planned "health campus", as the final replacement for the hospital from 2030, could be built on the existing site.

Plans shot down
However, the delay also means that the partial operation of the hospital, which is now exclusively a day clinic, will last at least six months longer than planned, and with only a third of the possible capacity: The AUVA's plans to set up more than one operating theater in the day clinic have been shot down by the authorities for fire safety reasons.

This means that from now on, only around seven operations per day will be possible at the Böhler Hospital for a whole year, and only because the staff there are doing their utmost. All other necessary operations will have to be distributed to all other Viennese hospitals as before.