A $780 million upgrade of John Hunter Hospital could be completed by 2025 under a re-elected Coalition government, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard says.
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Addressing media outside the hospital with local Liberal candidates and Medical Staff Council members on Tuesday, Mr Hazzard said John Hunter Hospital was "one of the busiest" in NSW, with about 80,000 patients going through its emergency department each year.
"This is the only tertiary referral hospital between here and the border," Mr Hazzard said.
"It was a Liberal-National Government that built the John Hunter originally in the '90s, and is here now to rebuild the parts of the John Hunter that need to be rebuilt. We are estimating it will take about six months or so for the Medical Staff Council to produce the clinical services plan - a document that reflects what the clinicians believe are the services required for this hospital.
"Beyond that, health infrastructure will do master planning for the actual design of the buildings. It is a challenge - this hospital is built on a ridge and we need to make sure we don't interfere with the very busy activity that goes on.
"But we would anticipate that work would start being seen to happen within the next 18 months... And in about five or six years from now, we should be opening the new buildings."
Professor Michael Hensley, of the Medical Staff Council, said their goal was to provide a facility that was "fit for purpose" now, and the next 20-to-30 years.
The original hospital emergency department had been built to accommodate 40,000 to 45,000 patients per year.
"We are anticipating that in the next 10 years, that will go over 100,000," he said. "What we need at present is to double the size of all aspects of the emergency department - resuscitation areas, acute areas, paediatric areas. A third of our patients are children. We are the third children's hospital in the state - so part of this redevelopment will be the redevelopment of the children's hospital."
Asked why the commitment to upgrade the hospital was announced in Sydney, rather than the Hunter, on March 10, Mr Hazzard told the Newcastle Herald it was due to it being the "golden age of health in NSW".
"We have had so many announcements in health. We have roughly $8 billion worth of new hospitals being built across NSW. One third of those are in our regional areas. And I couldn't clone myself," he said.
Scot MacDonald, Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter, said $280 million had been committed to building the final stage of the Newcastle Inner City Bypass, with work set to begin on the footbridge mid-year.
The bypass - west of the hospital between Lookout Road at New Lambton Heights and Newcastle Road at Jesmond, was going through the final planning approvals.
"Our job is to make sure RMS continue that work and get on with the bypass and that it does link up with the plans for the hospital. The double ramp, going north and south, optimises what they can do in their planning," he said.
"The community would expect us to make sure those jobs happen coordinated, and in collaboration."
Mr Hazzard added that the $780 million investment in John Hunter Hospital, coupled with a $470 million investment in a new hospital at Maitland and plans to expand Manning Hospital, would bring the region's total health infrastructure investment to more than $1 billion.
