Doctor slams design of new city hospital

A leading Toowoomba doctor has called for a “proper” hospital, as a round of community feedback closes for Toowoomba’s new $1.3bn hospital.

Toowoomba and Darling Downs Local Medical Association president Dr Peter Hopson weighed in on the 118 bed hospital slated to be completed in 2027, and said the region needed a “$3bn proper hospital” with an additional 500 beds.

The billion-dollar hospital was first proposed in 2018, and in 2023 the Queensland Government committed $50 million to the construction of the project, with John Holland contracted for the detailed design of the hospital for the first stage before the main construction works begin.

The new hospital is being built on the grounds of the 75hectacre Baillie Henderson Hospital, first built in 1890 as an asylum, and now functioning as a hospital with an array of services from rehabilitation to psychology, nutrition and occupational therapy.

According to the Darling Downs Health Services website, the vision of the campus will be an “unrivalled health and knowledge precinct experience” with “multidisciplinary health services, research, education, commercial, and community recreation spaces”.

The new Toowoomba Hospital will create a two campus model, with the current hospital 7km away at Pechey St.

Dr Hopson said this would create an “organisational joke” dividing and “divorcing” the medical services.

“It should be all in or forget about it,” he said.

There was “no overall game plan” for the hospital and health services in the region, which needed a “$3bn proper hospital with 500 beds”, he said.

“There’s one heritage-listed building worth keeping at Baillie Henderson,” Dr Hopson said.

He suggested simply bulldozing the property and building a full hospital with emergency, theatre, scans and MRI.

Dr Hopson said the existing hospital was an “antiquated building” which did not have the infrastructure to deal with new technology and was difficult to keep clean.

“It’s a 20 cent solution to a $2 problem,” Dr Hopson said.

While this round of community consultation has closed, the Darling Downs Health Service is open to feedback “contributing to a design that will support improved care, patient outcomes and staff experience,” a DDHS spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said the planning of what services would be available at the new hospital was ongoing.

They also said that the completion of the new hospital was expected in the second half of 2027.