New Shellharbour Hospital and Integrated Services

A brand new hospital will be built at Dunmore Road, Dunmore and will provide the local community with:

• an expanded emergency department
• enhanced paediatric services including a new Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU)
• specialised elective surgery services
• rehabilitation and aged care services
• acute medical services
• expanded mental health services
• new drug and alcohol unit
• renal dialysis
• outpatients care services
• car parking and improved public transport links.

This important piece of infrastructure will provide more care closer to people's homes, reducing the need to travel out of the area for treatment. The new hospital will include state-of-the-art facilities for emergency and critical care, mental health, medicine and surgery, rehabilitation and ambulatory care in a new location where we will continue to care for the community well into the future.

The new hospital will play a significant role in the District's service network and will be a significantly larger and more capable hospital. It will:

• become the District's specialist elective surgical centre, with an efficient high volume short stay model delivered in specific facilities
• continue to be the District's centre for mental health inpatient care, with new recovery-orientated facilities
• cater for the local (and growing) community for a range of services through a significant increase in size and capability.

Construction of the new hospital is now underway and is expected to be complete in 2027.

Work to deliver the new Warrawong Community Health Centre, part of the $780 million New Shellharbour Hospital and Integrated Services Project is currently underway. The new community health centre is being built on a portion of land on Port Kembla Hospital site.

The new Warrawong Community Health Centre will provide essential community-based health services such as community nursing, child and family health and mental health support.

Services at the new Warrawong Community Health Centre will include:

• Kids and families
  • child and adult allied health services  
  • audiology – servicing paediatrics to adulthood
  • Warrawong Child and Family Health Nurse Service
  • Binji and Boori (Aboriginal Maternal Infant Child Health Service)
  • antenatal services
• Community health nurse led clinics
  • asthma
  • continence
  • stoma
  • wound care
• Drug and alcohol
  • Needle and Syringe Program (First Step Program)
  • drug and alcohol counselling service
• Sexual health service
• Community mental health
• Equipment loan pool
  • A loan pool of aides to support rehabilitation at home, for example walking frame, wheelchair or hoists.

Construction of the community health centre is expected to be completed in 2026.

The new Bulli Hospital Hospital was opened in 2020 and has provided excellent healthcare services to the local community.

In August 2021, the NSW Government announced it would refurbish the Bulli Aged Care facility for rehabilitation and palliative care services. The work includes:

• upgrades to improve fire services
• additional outside/fresh air and internal air change rate improvements
  installing a new plant
• internal enhacement to hydraulic, electrical and ICT based services for health and general facility integration
• minor upgrades to some external balconies
• upgrades to provide a Day Rehabilitation Hospital.

Construction work, carried out by Huchinson Builders, is now complete.

Wollongong Hospital has undergone a small refurbishment to transform rehabilitation services, delivering improved and contemporary facilities.

The refurbishments for the rehabilitation services included:

• enhanced activities of daily living facilities to be co-located with the ward
• a dedicated rehabilitation gym

Work has now been completed.

Our population is growing and our people are living longer with chronic and complex illnesses. By 2031, the Shoalhaven catchment is forecast to grow 12%, with significantly faster population growth in the 70+ age groups.

To provide high quality, accessible healthcare for our growing population, we need a significantly larger hospital, in both size and capability. The future hospital needs to be close to transport links and integrated with a wide range of health services to better serve the needs of our community now and into the future.

We also want to incorporate the lessons, the insights and the many breakthroughs we've made as a health service during COVID-19 to future-proof our services and the buildings that house them.

We will work closely with our neighbours to ensure impacts are minimised as much as possible. When required notices or letters are sent out to inform neighbours of any upcoming works that they may be interested in. There are also stringent rules built into construction contracts to ensure the builders or contractors minimise impacts on the site.

Importantly, the new hospital is set back from Dunmore Road and will be surrounded by trees and specific landscaping to ensue visual and noise impacts are minimised. 

Port Kembla Hospital was officially opened in 1965 and is coming to the end of its useful life.

Hospital design has advanced greatly since Port Kembla was opened, including in the design of patient wards, the use of technology, work health and safety considerations and functionality. Our facilities need to be fit for purpose and reflect contemporary ways of working.  All inpatient units have been relocated from Port Kembla Hospital to newly refurbished facilities in the District. Community based services are still operating from the Port Kembla Hospital site. 

The NSW Government purchased a brand new unused aged care centre co-located on the Bulli Hospital campus.

The NSW Government identified that purchasing this facility will improve the District’s network of healthcare services, increasing sub-acute bed capacity and enabling implementation of contemporary models of care.

Acquiring this facility has also given the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District a unique opportunity to relocate some services to a brand new and modern facility built to cater for our ageing population. 

Refurbishments at the facility located next to Bulli Hospital included bringing the facility up to clinical and hospital grade standards and delivery of a brand new rehabilitation gym. This work was completed in August 2023. 

The Day Rehabilitation Unit, Rehabilitation and Palliative Care Wards relocated from Port Kembla Hospital to Bulli Hospital. Staff are now working in a modern space, while the palliative care patients have private rooms, with access to outdoor areas, large windows, large flatscreen TVs and their own bathrooms.