Albury-Wodonga Health chief executive Leigh McJames said planned upgrades of the emergency, intensive care units and maternity sections on the Albury hospital site and the concentration of sub-acute functions at Wodonga would cater for the region’s needs for the next 10 to 15 years.

The changes backed-up by a recently completed master-planning exercise by AWH won’t require the major investment seen at other regional health services in Victoria, Wagga and most recently Griffith.

Doctors weighed into the recent Victoria election campaign claiming AWH wasn’t winning its share of funding from the two state governments and re-elected member for Benambra Bill Tilley said after his win he wanted a site identified for a new hospital in his next term in office.

“We can future proof for the next 10 years well under what everyone else is getting splashed at them,” Mr McJames said.

“We’ve just finished a major master-planning process.

“I think the greenfield site concept is in the 10-20 year window and is not the immediate thing we need now.

“We’ve just built a $65 million cancer centre, a $5 million cath lab (at Albury).

“We can do everything we need to do for the next 10 years (at Albury and Wodonga).”

The cancer centre and cardiac catheter lab were both funded by the federal government.

A survey was conducted as part of the master-planning process and revealed 75 per cent of those surveyed were prepared to travel between Albury and Wodonga for specialist services.

“What the public has told us is that one of the most important things to them is to provide specialist services so they don’t have to travel to Melbourne,” Mr McJames said.

“It is the strategic driver behind everything we are doing.”

AWH serves a 250,000 population catchment presently.