Hospital on track for upgrade

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Hospital on track for upgrade

A POPULATION explosion, geography and an ageing community has pushed Wonthaggi Hospital to become the ideal location for massive redevelopment.
In a meeting last week hosted by Inverloch Men’s Shed, Bass Coast Health chief executive Jan Child outlined the project, set in four stages with the first funded by the State Government’s $115m boost announced earlier this year.
The project will including making the current emergency department eight times bigger, create staff accommodation and expand wards and orthopaedic services.
When completed, the hospital will have the capacity to treat an extra 26,000 emergency patients annually and a high dependency unit for patients in a critical condition.
Ms Child said the new emergency department was expected to be opened by 2023 and interviews were being held with potential architects for pre-demolition to begin next March.
Ten years ago Wonthaggi Hospital was categorised as a sub-regional hospital compared to the South Gippsland Health Service’s Leongatha Hospital which is classified as local.
Ms Child’s said Wonthaggi’s geographical location made it suitable as a sub-regional hospital allowing it to cater for the large influx of people to places like Inverloch and Phillip Island during holiday periods.
The Bass Coast Shire population is projected to have grown by an extra 55 per cent by 2031, compared to South Gippsland Shire’s growth of 19 per cent in that time.
Inverloch Men’s Shed president Julian Sellers said the meeting was held in line with the group’s ethos to promote men’s health and openness to talk about health issues.
“Men will often talk to men about their health more. The idea is about promoting your own health and the community’s health,” he said.
“The whole hospital complex has been under certain strain in past years and this meeting was to help put people’s minds at ease by hearing about what new services the hospital will provide.”

Master plan: The blue areas in this digital rendering outline stage one of the major redevelopment to Bass Coast Health’s Wonthaggi Hospital, including a major expansion to the emergency department.

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Posted by on Sep 25 2018. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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