The Orange Private Hospital section of the Bloomfield Medical Centre will be twice as big as planned, the developers have revealed.
The hospital will now occupy two floors, instead of one, of the seven-storey BMC Tower on Forest Road and include space for seven operating theatres, 34 ward rooms and six high-dependency rooms, with plans to open the facility next Easter.
The Orange Surgery Centre will leave its McNamara Street rooms of the past 17 years to operate the new private hospital at Bloomfield.
OSC director Dr Bill Mackie said they were expanding services and staff numbers to become the private hospital provider.
“[It is] the most significant health-based private building ever constructed in Orange,” he said.
“The new Orange Private Hospital will lease two levels and commence with four fully-operational theatres [with capacity for three more], HDU, recovery rooms and inpatient rooms to give our patients, staff and surgeons state of the art facilities,” he said.
“We’re basically looking to expand. We will be at least doubling the staff level,” he said.
That would include an extra 20 nurses and adding to the current 12 doctors at its McNamara Street rooms.
“We will be advertising and trying to get in staff where we can and train them up,” he said.
Dr Mackie said they would be able to provide Orange with services normally only available in capital cities.
“Orange is such a medical centre, 55 per cent of our patients come from outside Orange. Orange has over 110 specialists who live in town and that’s through all the different specialties,” he said.
“What we want to do is have the capacity to have as big a private hospital as required by the town.
“We will be putting all the theatres on one level and all the beds on another level so we probably have vacant space on both levels but we’ll have room to expand.”
He said fit-out planning and negotiations with health funds and the health department needed to be done before it could open.
Zauner Construction managing director Garry Zauner said they were on track to open the first floor of the BMC Tower, a medical centre for doctors and allied health rooms, in November.
Car parking and garden areas around the building are already nearly finished.
Mr Zauner said work on a 82-room medi-motel, for patients and their families, would start before Christmas.
“The minister’s signed off on the final approval for the modifications required.”
“It is a medically-friendly motel,” Mr Zauner said.
That will be followed by a childcare centre with the capacity for 104 children of workers from the private hospital and Orange hospital on the opposite side of Forest Road.
He said the Orange site would start with the same number of operating theatres as his company’s original site, the Gardens Medical Centre in Albury, even though the Orange population was smaller.
“This is a really good story for us,” he said.
“There is a significant amount of construction to do in a multi-million hospital so we are hoping to have it open by Easter. That is going to take some doing, but we can do it.”
The complex is a joint venture between Zauner and James Richmark Pty Ltd.
James Richmark director Frank O’Halloran said confirming the private hospital operator was a significant step in the development.
“We are delighted that a local Orange private hospital group will move into our superb one-stop Bloomfield Medical Centre,” he said.
“We have been adamant from commencement that locals be given first priority in our medical centre.”
The BMC, situated on the former Orange drive-in theatre site, will also boast a retail component.
Proposals for the fitout of a chemist and a cafe were lodged with Orange City Council in August.
A Terry White Chemmart chemist will be in suite two on the ground floor while a so-far unnamed cafe is also planned.