Early next year the doctors and nurses of Dubbo Hospital's well-worn and crowded Emergency Department (ED) will make way for the expansion of a nearby three-storey building.
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Staff of the hospital's current medical imaging department will move with them.
They will begin work in new state-of-the-art facilities on the ground floor of the three-storey building, the focus of the hospital's stage four redevelopment.
The old ED and surrounds will then be knocked down to allow for the expansion of the new building. Currently, it is seven-tenths of its intended size.
Health Infrastructure reports of "good progress" in the construction of the second three-storey building on the hospital campus by builder Hansen Yuncken.
"Construction of the new three-storey hospital building is being staged to minimise disruption to patients and staff," its spokeswoman said. "The first phase of construction commenced in July 2018 and will include the new emergency, short stay and medical imaging units.
"Stage four construction will then focus on a new critical care floor comprising of a coronary care/stroke unit, intensive care unit, cardiac catheter laboratory, new ambulatory care unit, and new front of house entry and drop off zone."
Dubbo Hospital general manager Debbie Bickerton has confirmed that new emergency, short stay and medical imaging units will occupy the building's ground floor.
Level one will accommodate the ambulatory care unit and level two will be the "critical care floor".
"They will deck out the ground floor first for emergency and imaging," Ms Bickerton said when standing outside the ED. "Then early next year when it is finished, we will move them from where they currently are into that ground floor.
"Then these parts here will be demolished and the three floors (of the new building) will come out this way to the edge of the existing building.
"The main entry will be a bit further south to where it is now and there will still be a drop-off zone. Ambulances will come in from where the George Hatch Building used to be."
Ms Bickerton anticipates that level one of the new building will be on the way to being finished "at the same time" as ED and medical imaging staff move into the ground floor.
She said the completed three-storey building would be commissioned and opened in 2021.
Level one of the new building will be connected to the Western Cancer Centre, set to be built from early 2020. The contract to construct the cancer centre will be awarded mid-2019.
