St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba launches new $8m intensive care unit, after construction finishes with Hutchinson Builders

Covid-19 patients will finally be able to be treated at one of Toowoomba’s top hospitals, with the opening of its new $8m intensive care unit.

More than 1000 patients are expected to be able to be treated at St Vincent’s Private Hospital Toowoomba’s new $8m intensive care unit, which will also be able to take care of people requiring quarantining.

Healthy residents were given their only chance to tour the new unit on Saturday before it opens to patients this week.

It comes just a few weeks after Hutchinson Builders completed the finishing touches on the project.

Built on top of the East Toowoomba hospital’s recently-built emergency department, the new ICU features eight beds in large rooms with large views of the city.

St Vincent's Hospital Toowoomba nurse unit manager Dinesh Kathayat says the facility's new eight-bed intensive care unit will bring it into the modern age.

More crucially, the unit includes two negative-pressure rooms that will allow people with infectious diseases like Covid-19 or ebola to be treated.

St Vinnie’s nurse unit manager Dinesh Kathayat said the ICU had been designed with patient comfort and recovery in mind, with the hospital opting to base the rooms around a central nursing station.

“The rooms and beds and equipment are very movable and flexible, you can move them in every direction,” he said.

“Every room has access to an extra light and also a view of half of Toowoomba — the natural light is very important for sick patients.”

Photos of the completed intensive care unit at St Vincent's Private Hospital in Toowoomba by Hutchinson Builders.

Mr Kathayat said the Covid-19 pandemic had exposed some of the hospital’s ageing infrastructure, with the new ICU ensuring it could deliver the best medical care for current standards.

“The current (six-bed) ICU was opened in 2002, so it’s been 21 years that people having been staying there and lots of things have changed since then, including legislation,” he said.

“In the past we were not able to take care of Covid patients, because we did not have negative pressure rooms.

“But this ICU has two of them, so from Monday onwards, we can provide that.

“These new rooms are almost like mini-theatres, so if we have a critically-sick patient that is unstable and we can’t take them to theatre, we can perform them here.”

Checking out the new intensive care unit at St Vincent's Hospital Toowoomba are nurse unit manager Dinesh Kathayat and Hutchinson Builders project manager Tim Thompson. The ICU includes two negative-pressure rooms.

Hutchinson Builders project manager Tim Thompson said the ICU provided the “unusual” challenge of trying to build a new medical unit on top of an operational department.

“A lot of our builds might be nestled in an operational facility, they’re generally not on top of a facility,” he said.

“Logistics was our biggest issue, getting labour and equipment up there to do the job.

“We did have a tower crane up here for 13 weeks, which solved most of our problems, but making sure the hospital staff were happy was critical.”

With the ICU now finished, hospital chief executive Kathryn McKeefry said the leadership team would now turn to its ageing endoscopy unit.

“It’s very dated and logistically a challenge — it’s down one end of the hospital, meaning patients have to make a small hike to it,” she said.

“It’s also not very private and very squashed (so) that’s what I’m working on.”

Both the ED and ICU were funded thanks to significant donations by philanthropist Clive Berghofer, whose name adorns both units.