As work on Adelaide’s new hospital continues to lag, maintenance at the old Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) is not keeping up.

The new $2.3 billion hospital is not expected to be open until the end of 2017, but reports say ‘technical completion’ should be achieved between January and March next year.

The hospital’s original due date was in January this year.

“It won't be possible to move into the hospital until late in 2017 because there is a period of commercial acceptance that occurs after technical completion and then there's got to be a move outside the winter busy period,” South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association president David Pope has told the ABC.

“So based on that expectation there wouldn't move into the hospital until October-November 2017.”

He said doctors are being forced to work around maintenance issues at the old hospital to ensure patients were not affected.

“We are seeing at the existing Royal Adelaide that routine maintenance hasn't been occurring for some time now,” Dr Pope said.

“So there are issues in keeping equipment operational, there's problems around various things breaking down and a reluctance to get those fixed in a timely way.”

The SA Government has launched legal action in the Supreme Court over the issues at the new hospital.