BUILDERS are expected to handover the new Wonthaggi Hospital on November 9, with Bass Coast Health (BCH) to then commence extensive testing and fit outs in preparation to officially take over. 
As part of planning for the massive task of commissioning the Wonthaggi Hospital Expansion (WHE) and opening the new building, BCH staff, volunteers and community advisory committee members gathered for a full day workshop last week. 
They discussed preparations already underway, and actions required to successfully transition into the new building. 
The commissioning process is being overseen by BCH executive director Louise Sparkes and service development director Kerryn Griffiths. 
The three storey WHE will be a spectacular building, with the ground level as the main entrance to the health service, with the emergency department, short stay unit, front of house (reception) and radiology. 

Hospital features 

Level one will be theatres and recovery, day of surgery admissions, elective surgery admission unit, and central sterilising and supply department. 
Level three will be the surgical ward, where patients will undergo and recover after surgery. 
The Emergency Department will initially offer nine cubicles over summer and then reduce back to six cubicles in February post the summer holiday rush, in line with usual practice for that time of year at BCH. 
The 32-bed surgical ward will cater for surgical and medical patients for the first few months, while the older medical ward undergoes renovations. 
The new operating suite will initially run two theatres with a procedure room to open in late 2023. As soon as the emergency department moves from the standalone building of Armitage House into the emergency department, sub-acute services, which provide rehabilitation and palliative care, will return to Armitage House – a purpose for which the building was recently renovated. 
There are also plans for the renovation of the former emergency department to become a new pharmacy and for the current operating suite to become a centre for women’s health, including new birthing suites and a special care nursery.
As soon as the furniture and fittings are in and testing of all the environments has occurred (expected for mid-December), radiology, emergency department and the acute ward will move into the new building. 
These services will be given time to settle in and then the move of theatres and perioperative services will take place in January. 
The current $115m WHE project is stage one of a proposed four-stage redevelopment of the site, to bring BCH into full capacity as a sub-regional health service.
Stages two and three include the development of a much-expanded outpatient and day treatment area including a new dialysis area, a contemporary medical ward that connects to the new surgical ward as part of the WHE, and a new sub-acute ward. 
Stage four is the redevelopment of residential aged care facilities. Stages two, three and four are still subject to funding commitments. 

According to BCH CEO Jan Child, the new WHE new building has been future-proofed to cope with the increasing demand predicted over the next 10-15 years. 

“We will maximise use of this new facility to make sure our staff are working in the best possible care environment, but this does not mean that the whole building will be occupied by new services,” Ms Child said.
“National and state-wide workforce shortfalls will determine which services grow in the first instance and which ones wait until workforce is in a better position. 
“We will expand our cancer, surgery and women’s health services in the first instance because this aligns with workforce availability; services such as paediatrics and high dependency will follow later once we know we have the workforce to match the demand. 
“I understand that everyone might expect that we will be opening everything from day one but growing a health service requires significant planning to make sure we have a highly skilled workforce and a facility that is well equipped. 
“We have almost doubled our services over the last five years and will go close to doing the same over the next five years. I know people want everything to be in place yesterday but we must do things in a planned way to keep our patients safe.”
BCH also recently received $320k as part of the latest round of the Medical Equipment Replacement Program from the Surgical Equipment Innovation Fund.  
The money will be used to upgrade BCH’s fleet of scopes.
Scopes such as gastroscopes, colonoscopes, cystoscopes are used for day surgery procedures such as coloscopies, gastroscopies and urological procedures (bladder and urethra).
A series of community forums will be held over the coming months to provide the community with information about current and new services. 
These will be advertised over the coming weeks but for further information, please email publicrelations@basscoasthealth.org.au