The `botched' switchover to Brisbane's new Lady Cilento Children's Hospital has undermined patient care for the sake of politics, Queensland's public sector union says.
Patients and staff from the Mater and Royal Children's hospitals merged into the new facility in South Brisbane at the end of November.
But the Together Union says only two operating theatres are open and the remainder will not be online until late January or early February.
Secretary Alex Scott says the hospital was opened prematurely and accused the government of rushing the process in a bid to announce good news in lead up to Christmas and before the impending state election.
"More importantly the Royal Children's Hospital should not have been closed until the new hospital was fully operational," he told reporters in Brisbane on Tuesday.
"What this really means is there was no basis, other than political grandstanding, for the closure of the Royal Children's Hospital."
The "political disaster" was undermining patient care and had the potential to contribute to a blowout in surgery wait times, Mr Scott said.
A spokesman for Health Minister Lawrence Springborg rejected the accusations and said an independent board had supervised the entire process.
"There is not a political dimension to this, it is purely clinical," he said.
All 14 theatres were online after the hospital had completed a `ramping up' period, chief executive of Children's Health Queensland Dr Peter Steer said.
"We never intended to have all 14 going right now," he said.
The ramping up period gave the two groups of staff time to get to know each other, Dr Steer said.
"We understand, and there's great evidence in the literature now, about patient safety that you have to be very careful about (the) team and team work," he said.
"It would be silly to launch two groups of people together, who've never worked together before, and expect it to work like a well-oiled machine on day one."
He said elective surgeries were commonly scaled back over the two-week Christmas period and patient care was not in jeopardy.
"This is always a quiet time."
The hospital was working to overcome minor teething problems but had so far performed more than 380 surgeries and seen more than 4500 outpatients, Dr Steer said.
"It's going remarkably well. The staff are exceptional. We're actually pulling off something that nobody's ever done before in terms of this merger."
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