Ballarat Base Hospital to receive two new radiotherapy machines, investment in robotic surgery

New machines, which use radiation to treat many types of cancer, will reduce the need for Ballarat patients to travel to Melbourne for treatment.

Ballarat Hospital will receive new cancer treatment machinery as part of the latest state budget. Photo: Chloe Smith.

Ballarat Base Hospital will receive two new radiotherapy machines to replace its decade-old cancer-treating linear accelerators.

The $3.5 million investment forms part of the 2022/23 state budget outlined this week.

It is hoped the new machines, which use radiation to treat many types of cancer, will reduce the need for patients to travel to Melbourne for healthcare.

The budget also allocated $6.5 million for investment in robot-assisted surgery at Ballarat Hospital, in which surgeons control the movement of robotic arms for some procedures, lowering the risk of infection.

Speaking in Ballarat, premier Daniel Andrews called the robotic surgery funding a “fantastic advancement”.

“We have this in Melbourne; we’re now going to have this in regional Victoria and Ballarat’s going to be at the centre of it,” he said.

“If we can do it locally, that’s exactly what we want.”

Premier Daniel Andrews with Wendouree MP Juliana Addison at Ballarat Base Hospital on Wednesday.

Ballarat is also one of three regional areas in which $35.5 million will go towards more acute mental health beds – 33 at Ballarat Hospital – and $10 million will go towards planning for emergency department hubs to be set up in Ballarat, Bendigo, and Shepparton for people dealing with mental health and alcohol or drug-related problems.

As part of statewide initiatives in the budget, the Grampians Public Health Unit will share in an extra $40 million to continue its work to do with Covid.

Staffing at regional hospitals, including Ballarat, will be bolstered by recruiting more international workers and helping undergraduate nursing students enter the workforce.

Opposition Health Minister Georgie Crozier said total expenditure on health care under Labor would in fact fall by more than $2 billion from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

“I have called for the wider use of robot-assisted surgery for some time, and I am please the government appears to have taken notice,” she said.

“Regional Victorians deserve access to the best healthcare available, and that’s why we’ve committed to build a $750 million teaching hospital in the Mallee because health care workers are more likely to remain in regional areas if they are taught there.

“Chronic underfunding and mismanagement of the health system by the Andrews Labor Government has caused the crisis in regional Victoria, and they’re not the ones to get us out of it.”