The prominent gynaecologist spoke out last week as Victorian and NSW health ministers Jenny Mikakos and Brad Hazzard made a trip to the Border to announce that construction on Albury Wodonga Health's emergency department redevelopment would start mid-2021.

The Victorian government revealed it was contributing almost $6 million to the NSW commitment of $30 million, announced in 2017, to boost the capacity of the emergency department at Albury from 16 to 42.

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The work would be finished by the end of 2022 but Dr Giltrap said it was merely a "Band-Aid" solution.

"The Accident and Emergency is catering for 60,000 patients at the moment and it's only equipped to cater for 40,000. They can't cope. Projections are by the time (the new ED) is built, they'll be overloaded. What we need to urgently progress is the master plan for the future to develop services for the next 30 years," he told The Border Mail.

It's a far cry from the less-than-two-week turnaround it took to build a new hospital in China following the coronavirus outbreak but if Albury Wodonga Health was handed $1 billion tomorrow, it'd be 2030, at best, before a new facility could be operational.

And there's a mountain of planning work - which is being done by Albury Wodonga Health at the moment - before the government would be prepared to hand over the money to begin the project.

It's absolutely important that pressure is kept on governments to deliver state-of-the-art health services and everyone would agree with Dr Giltrap on that point.

But it's also important for the people of the Border and North East to know that more than doubling the capacity of the emergency department at the major site which services a health network of more than 250,000 is a good outcome for our community in the short term until a new hospital eventually opens its doors.