The Plzeň Region built a hospital in Klatovy for 1.6 billion

Plzeň - In the newly built hospital in Klatovy, constructed by the Plzeň Region, outpatient clinics will start operating on October 1, and full operation is expected to begin on October 26. This was announced today at a meeting of the Plzeň Regional Council, which discussed the report on the construction of the facility with 238 beds. The hospital will initially operate in a trial run. The council approved the limit for the largest investment project in the Plzeň region, which after several increases in the original cost is about 1.6 billion Czech crowns. Two-thirds of the costs will come from the regional budget.
      The governor Milan Chovanec (ČSSD) stated that the region will pay about 980 million crowns from its own funds, while the regional administration has obtained approximately 450 million in EU subsidies for part of the project. The opposition ODS is unhappy that no one from the regional leadership has yet quantified for the councilors how much the hospital will actually cost. When the ODS left the regional leadership in 2008, it approved the construction of the hospital at a bid price of 789 million CZK excluding VAT, and an additional up to 250 million CZK was expected to be spent on equipment, pointed out councilor Vladislav Vilímec (ODS). His party colleagues reminded that the ODS handed over to the new ČSSD leadership nearly one billion crowns saved for the hospital.
      ČSSD insists that the original project was not well developed and that changes needed to be made. "From the beginning, you had to anticipate that you are signing contracts for competitions worth 1.4 to 1.5 billion crowns," said Chovanec.
      The exact figure for how much the construction of the hospital will actually cost has not yet been quantified even by the regional economist Martin Zaoral. "The cost prediction for the Klatovy hospital based on data known as of June 30 is 1.437 billion crowns," he told ČTK. He admitted that the final amount may still vary. The ODS is convinced that they could have managed to build it for a quarter of a billion less.
      However, the regional office had an analysis prepared to assess the construction and the expenses incurred. According to the conclusions of this report, the regional leadership acted well during the construction of the hospital. However, the opposition is not satisfied, the analysis was created in a month and according to Vilímec, it does not sufficiently evaluate the economy and efficiency of the region's procedures.