Planned Queensland health precinct a game changer
A world-class health precinct planned for Queensland’s south will create 7000 jobs and is expected to change the way Australia views regional healthcare.
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A world-class health precinct planned for Toowoomba is expected to change the way Australia views regional healthcare.
The billion-dollar Toowoomba Hospital project will be built on 76ha and service vast areas of the western corridor and southwest Queensland.
The current Toowoomba Hospital is regularly at 100 per cent capacity as the only public hospital in the region, servicing more than 169,000 people, as demand for healthcare in the Darling Downs increases.
The new facility would include a medical industries and health and wellbeing precinct.
About 3000 people are expected to work on site once the hospital is built, with more than 4000 construction jobs created from the project.
Rise of the West, in partnership with the University of Southern Queensland, is celebrating the pioneering western corridor region and its people every day this week in The Courier-Mail, Toowoomba Chronicle and Queensland Times online.
Darling Downs Health board chair Mike Horan said the new site would service a vast region, including the Darling Downs, Southern Downs Western Downs and South Burnett.
“This new hospital has the potential to be the best inland hospital in Australia, if not the world,” he said.
“It’ll be terribly important in the provision of rural and regional health services and I think will go a long way to closing the gap that often is talked about in the availability of specialist services to rural people and it will be not only a magnificent hospital but the whole campus will be a centre of health excellence.
“We expect to have a university medical school there, we see the site being a great venue for rehabilitation from strokes, heart attacks to sports medicine.”
In 2018, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a new Toowoomba Hospital would be a part of the state government’s four-year charter and would be built at the old Baillie Henderson Hospital site.
Darling Downs Health was granted $10m for a business case for the project, which has since been approved by the board of Building Queensland and the investment assurance committee of Queensland Health.
Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said Darling Downs and Greater Ipswich were experiencing stronger than ever demand for local health services.
“The Palaszczuk government is catering to this growing demand by delivering record funding to the Darling Downs HHS and the West Moreton HHS,” she said.
“The 202021 State Budget includes $901.4m for Darling Downs HHS and $691m for West Moreton HHS,” Ms D’Ath said.
Ms D’Ath said planning was continuing for a new Toowoomba Hospital with Darling Downs Health working with stakeholders to progress the proposed project.
Mr Horan said the next state budget would be crucial in the development of the project as they await the “green light”.
“We hope that we can get the green light to commence the project in some way and that we can get approval for funding arrangements,” he said.
The new project came at a desperate time for the region, Mr Horan said.
“I think the staff at the old Toowoomba Hospital are hanging on by their fingernails in the hope that something will happen here,” he said.
“We’ve had to rent buildings in town for facilities like our paediatric section because we’ve just run out of space on the old site.
“The hospital is generally operating at 100 per cent capacity always and we’re just so short of space that we’ve been bolting on temporary wards and temporary theatres.”
He said the emergency department saw record numbers with up to 75 ambulances each day for a department with 28 spaces.
The project comes as the Western Corridor’s population rapidly grows, with the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce calling for their own public hospital development.
A proposal was submitted to the state government last year for a public hospital in Greater Springfield in a partnership with Mater.
Since the submission, a petition has received almost 5000 signatures from the community, but president Neil Coupland said he wanted to see that number double.
“If we can get 10,000 signatures from the local region to say we need this, I think maybe there’s some people power then that will do it,” he said.
“When you’ve got 40,000 people living in the one suburb, 190,000 in that catchment, it’s a burden on families to be able to go and visit loved ones who are in hospital when they have to go for a 40-minute drive,” Mr Coupland said.
FACILITIES IN THE CURRENT TOOWOOMBA HOSPITAL VS THE PROPOSED NEW TOOWOOMBA HOSPITAL
SPACES IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT:
CURRENT- 28 NEW – 95
THEATRES:
CURRENT – 7 NEW – 14
ENDOSCOPY SUITES: CURRENT – 2 NEW – 4
CARDIAC CATHETER LABORATORY:
CURRENT – 0 NEW – 2
PET SCAN SITES:
CURRENT – 0 NEW – 1
LINEAR ACCELERATOR SITES: CURRENT – 0 NEW – 2
ORAL HEALTH CHAIRS: CURRENT – 8 NEW – 16
IMPATIENT AND OUTPATIENT BEDS: CURRENT – 459 NEW – 636
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