Bendigo Health: The Hospital That Serves Central Victoria

The new Bendigo Hospital, opened in 2017 as the result of a decade-long campaign for health infrastructure investment that reflected the health needs of Central Victoria's population, represents the most significant capital investment in Bendigo's public health infrastructure in the city's history. The hospital's construction on a new site in the Bendigo CBD, adjacent to La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, created the medical precinct that combines the acute services of the hospital with the education and research functions that university co-location provides. The new building's design, incorporating the clinical standards and the patient and staff environment that contemporary healthcare delivery requires, replaced the nineteenth century hospital infrastructure that the previous facility had outgrown.

Bendigo Health's role as the principal referral hospital for Central Victoria, serving a catchment that extends across the Loddon Mallee region to include communities as far as Mildura to the northwest and the Macedon Ranges to the south, makes it the most important healthcare facility for a vast geographic area whose rural and remote communities depend on the Bendigo services for the specialist care that their local health services cannot provide. The concentration of specialist medical services at Bendigo Health, including the oncology, cardiology, and surgical subspecialties, reflects this referral function and the investment that sustaining it requires.

The co-location of La Trobe University's Bendigo campus with the Bendigo Hospital creates the academic medical centre that allows the university's nursing, midwifery, and allied health programs to provide clinical placements in the adjacent hospital, producing the healthcare graduates that the regional workforce needs and improving the retention of locally trained professionals in the regional health workforce. The university-hospital relationship is one of the most productive in regional Victoria.

The mental health services that Bendigo Health provides, through the inpatient unit and the community mental health teams that cover the vast Central Victorian catchment, address the mental health needs of a regional population whose geographic isolation, agricultural economy pressures, and the social determinants of health that rural communities experience create a distinct mental health profile and service demand.

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