Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service has shared plans for its existing hospital site following the recent State budget announcement for Bundaberg's new state-of-the-art facility.
The landmark investment will see a new hospital built on land near the Bundaberg Ring Road while offering a range of existing non-urgent nine to five services on the current hospital site.
Wide Bay Hospital and Health Board Chair Peta Jamieson said she was pleased the health service had been afforded the unique opportunity that would provide the best of both worlds.
“Not only are locals getting a brand-new hospital with an extra 121 beds on a new site, but we’re able to take advantage of fit-for-purpose buildings on our existing site,” Ms Jamieson said.
“Delivering healthcare across two sites provides an amazing opportunity to continue our strategic and service delivery planning for the next 30 years and beyond.
“While initial thoughts have been developed about how best to capitalise on the flexibility and capacity that’s on offer across the sites, further work is occurring to ensure we get the right mix of services.
“Also, if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that there will be new models of care that will emerge while construction is underway on the new Bundaberg Hospital site.
“We’ll need to continually consider this as part of our infrastructure master planning process, and the opportunity to use existing infrastructure outside of the flood zone gives us enormous flexibility to do that.
“This is a huge win-win all round, for not only the Bundaberg but also the broader Wide Bay community.”
Plans for new hospital
Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service Chief Executive Debbie Carroll said the new hospital on the new site would accommodate the community’s most unwell patients, along with mental health, maternity and paediatric services, and enhanced support services such as medical imaging.
“It’s so important that all of our acute services are located together on the new site, especially for all of our patients requiring urgent care or an overnight stay,” Ms Carroll said.
“We’re also currently rethinking our concept design in response to valuable feedback shared by staff, patients and the local community throughout the business case process.
“Front and centre is ensuring the design and infrastructure is patient-centered, culturally-appropriate, supports contemporary models of care and our ability to treat more complex cases, enhances service efficiency and can be easily expanded in the future.”
The new Bundaberg Hospital project team will soon meet with key WBHHS staff to build upon work completed to date to develop an amended concept design.
“There’s plenty of work to be done, but the recent announcement means we’re one step closer to reality and we’re looking forward to sharing further updates as the work progresses,” Ms Carroll said.
In the meantime, WBHHS welcomes staff and community feedback about the new Bundaberg Hospital project at any time by emailing the project team at wbhhs-newhospital@health.qld.gov.au
With new hospital use have a CT machine x-ray and ultrasound use need a MRI machine to save use sending people to other place to have this done I say this cause I have to have a MRI done every year to get results on a tumma I have I would prefer to do all that in the one place as I have to do it for a hospital in Brisbane that use referred me to so would be so much easier to go to my local hospital to have it done I would appreciate this is just my suggestion to help the hospital in cases that need to have this done every year.
Thank you
Julie Nagy
The hospital needs a specialist pain treatment section.I have benefited a lot from treatment in Brisbane