St John of God Health Care is planning a $234 million expansion of its Murdoch Hospital, creating WA’s biggest medical precinct – just as long as it can secure the staff to service 165 new beds.
St John of God Health Care is planning a $234 million expansion of its Murdoch Hospital, creating WA’s biggest medical precinct – just as long as it can secure the staff to service 165 new beds.
Once completed, the precinct, which takes in the massive Fiona Stanley Hospital, will have a capacity of more than 1300 beds over the two hospitals.
And St John of God Health Care’s projections suggest this could spiral to more than 2000 beds in the long term.
It made the expansion plans for Murdoch an easy sell to the St John of God Health Care board, according to its group chief executive, Michael Stanford.
Dr Stanford said its sophisticated planning process meant it could highlight the future pressure points in the business and make provisions to meet this demand over a 20-year horizon.
The expansion project includes a 120-bed south wing, eight operating theatres, a birthing suite, a cancer centre and refurbishment of the existing wards.
Dr Stanford admitted finding the nurses to staff this expanded capacity was a concern, as was attracting workers for all the vital support services, such as cleaning.
It’s an issue that has already held back St John of God Health Care’s expansion plans in regional WA.
“We have land in the South West that would be a hospital today, if we had the staff,” Dr Stanford said.
The planned expansion at Murdoch will include a $2.6 million staff training centre as well as a new medical centre that will double the number of medical specialists on the site.
St John of God Hospital Murdoch chief executive Peter Mott said these investments were essential to attract and retain staff.
“Murdoch has a good reputation as being a family friendly employer,” Mr Mott said. “We put a lot of time, effort and money into the professional development of our nurses and we have also made a commitment to work with the universities … by providing opportunities for the nursing students to get practical experience.”
Mr Mott said St John of God was close to appointing a project manager but no decision had been made on the construction contract or whether the three stages of work would be tendered individually or as a single project.
Work is well under way on the adjacent Fiona Stanley site and Mr Mott said St John of God was mindful of the volume of health-care construction work on the horizon in WA, including the new $1.17 billion children’s hospital and the Midland health campus, which St John of God Health Care is bidding for in partnership with Brookfield.
St John of God has had discussions with the state government about its work schedule.
