Toowoomba Hospital: Darling Downs Health reveals new details on $1.3bn Baillie Henderson facility

The funding is locked in, but when is work starting? The region’s top health body has lifted the lid on a number of unanswered questions around the new Toowoomba Hospital.

Shovels will begin turning over soil at the new hospital site in the coming months, as more than $1 billion was dedicated to the much-needed facility.

Darling Downs Health and Hospital chairman Mike Horan confirmed civil works would begin at the Baillie Henderson site in the next financial year.

“There will be major earthworks happening, provision of water supply, power supply, a lot of road works happening and earth moving equipment working flat out here probably from half way through the next financial year, after we get completion of our detailed design, construct a site office and get those sorts of things happening,” he said.

“There will be major contractors and sub contractors – it's a massive project. It will all happen in a gradual way.”

Mr Horan has announced the Garden City is on the way to being “one of the greatest health centres in any regional city in Australia”.

“Baillie Henderson will be the emergency department, maternity, surgical, medical, cancer … all those sorts of things.

“It will be a world-class clinical hospital.”

DDH chief executive Annette Scott said the facility’s catering capabilities to the growing region was deliberated against population modelling.

“We also have to factor in there will be other models of care that will emerge over that next five years,” she said.

“We can guarantee above 100 additional beds, but there may be other models that will influence our expansion as well.

“We will be able to expand what we provide to the community.”

Despite growing speculation that the dedicated $20m for the first financial year is not enough, Ms Scott said the group was comfortable with the decision made.

“We have collaborated over what we felt was a reasonable figure that we would be able to use in the next 12 months to get those early works underway,” she said.

Mr Horan unveiled the proposed plan for the current Toowoomba Hospital site, which he visualised as a “visionary health hub” in Australia’s growing “capital city of health”.

“It has to be finalised … but in the centre of town we will have a health centre to cater to the nine-to-five type of procedures and for education and training and other health related industries,” he said.

“Its been part of our negotiations over the last 12 months, but we see it as being a training centre.

“There will be things like specialist outpatients, dental, we may be able to do some day surgery there too.

“The world’s your oyster with the CBD site.”

More than $1.3 billion was dedicated to the new hospital at Baillie Henderson.

MAYOR PRAISES GAME-CHANGING HOSPITAL FUNDING

Toowoomba leaders and medical experts have praised the state government’s funding of the city’s new hospital in the latest budget.

Mayor Paul Antonio called the first $20m towards the new facility at Baillie Henderson a step in the right direction for the region.

“With the new hospital and the vibrancy of the two private hospitals, we’ll become a far more important medical centre (in Queensland),” he said.

Australian Medical Association’s local representative Dr Ben Wakefield called the announcement “long overdue” to fix inefficiencies in the current hospital.

These include staff using paper charts instead of computers, which was described as “stone age” by some workers.

“It’s very exciting and overdue — it's been advocated for a long time,” Dr Wakefield said.

Dr Wakefield said the new hospital would need to allow infectious patients to isolate.

Originally published as Toowoomba Hospital: Darling Downs Health reveals new details on $1.3bn Baillie Henderson facility