The new emergency department at Albury hospital will open on February 14, Albury Wodonga Health's chief executive says.
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Bill Appleby flagged the date as he gave his official address to AWH's annual meeting on Tuesday, December 12.
"In keeping with the construction theme, significant progress has been made on the Albury hospital's new $36 million emergency department with an open date fast approaching - actually on Valentine's Day," Mr Appleby said.
The start-up day for the fresh casualty ward follows Victorian and NSW health ministers turning the first sod on the development in July 2022 and ministers saying in July 2023 the project was "now on track to be completed by the middle of next year".
Speaking to The Border Mail after the meeting, Mr Appleby said there would be a six-week commissioning and training process before the new emergency department accepted patients.
"The ED is never empty, so essentially people will be transferred into the new facility when we decide what the exact time is that we'll be transferring people across," Mr Appleby said.
"We will go back and gut out the old ED and we will build a 16-bed overnight stay unit."
Meanwhile, a patient on AWH's elective surgery waiting list has been left frustrated at answers given to questions she put to the annual meeting.
Wodonga retiree Vicki Lancaster is awaiting a left knee replacement and requires a walker to move around with the related pain sometimes rendering her immobile.
One of her questions asked why is AWH's surgical waiting list "three to four times longer than the hospitals in neighbouring regional areas?".
AWH chair Jonathan Green replied by referring to all life-threatening category one surgery being done in the required time and COVID delaying operations.
Mrs Lancaster was annoyed by that reply.
"I asked them what they were doing about three to four years waiting lists and they didn't give an answer, they referred to category one but the issue isn't with category one," Mrs Lancaster said.
Better Border Health representative Michelle Cowan was also frustrated at responses to a series of questions about the planned Albury hospital expansion, with Mr Green emphasising AWH was "incredibly grateful" for government funding for the project.
"It's disappointing we're still hearing the same rhetoric that the Albury Wodonga Health board is grateful for the funding," Ms Cowan said.
"That goes against what the community is saying and the community is saying 'this is not nearly enough, we deserve more', we're not grateful, in fact we're quite cynical about why public funds on eves of elections against the evidence of solid master planning."
