The first of these is happening in a part of the hospital with a potentially surprising level of significance.
“We have a current kitchen that delivers between 55,000 and 60,000 meals a year to our nursing home residents and to our hospital inpatients,” project manager Steven O’Brien said.
“It’s an old kitchen which was originally developed very early on in the existence of the hospital and has slowly declined due to age.”
Two years ago, a submission was made by the health service to the Department of Health for funds to develop a scope and project document for the kitchen’s redevelopment.
“We were successful in our grant application to develop those documents and develop a plan,” Mr O’Brien said.
“A further funding application was made to actually build the kitchen that we had scoped and designed, and we were informed in January this year that this application had also been successful.
“The kitchen redevelopment will certainly benefit all areas of the hospital and future-proof the health service against the expected growth in demand over many years,” Seymour Health chief executive Ward Steet said.
Alongside the kitchen, Seymour Health’s theatre is also undergoing redevelopment, thanks to funding via the Department of Health’s Regional Health Infrastructure Fund.
Nurse unit manager Georgie Lowerson said it was the central sterilising department – where the hospital’s instruments get reprocessed – that was the focus of the redevelopment, with the funding allowing this area to meet changing national standards.
“For us, it was about redoing our CSSD, as well as building a second theatre, which won’t be kitted out to be operational at this stage, but the space will be there for when we can, hopefully, get future funding to get that up and running,” she said.
Ms Lowerson said it was great for a healthcare provider operating in a regional community to be supported by this funding stream.
“It’s fantastic. I’ve been a member of staff here for about 16 years, and I love working here. It’s a great little hospital and I think for what we do and what we offer and the visiting specialists that we have here, I think we’re pretty lucky,” she said.
“It’d obviously be great to increase our services, so hopefully that can happen in future.”
In addition to the operating theatre capital works, Seymour Health was also successful in securing an additional $947,000 of funding to purchase a new state-of-the-art endoscopy tower and additional endoscopes to replace ageing equipment and increase surgical activity.
“The board and management of Seymour Health advocate strongly on behalf of the Seymour community to ensure the health service has the resources it needs to meet the community’s current and emerging healthcare needs and we are very appreciative of the support we receive from the Victorian Department of Health in this respect” Mr Steet said.
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