Health and Wellbeing Hub Project

The hub is an exciting development that will see the establishment of a new 125-bed sub-acute private hospital and associated primary healthcare and clinical services that will be made available to the local community. There will also be expanded space for aged care, child care, rehabilitation, prosthetics, nursing and psychology.

Importantly, it will also complement the existing health education services at the university, giving students world-class experience.

The hub is planned for a 3.55-hectare parcel of university-owned land in Plenty Road, at the gateway of its Bundoora campus. The site is only three kilometres from the Ring Road, and 15 kilometres from the city.

The Health & Wellbeing Hub will create a web of health services that align with and strengthen the university’s teaching, learning and research and provide valuable training and employment pathways for students and staff.

La Trobe University has launched a process to find a preferred private development and operating partner or partners to deliver a new hospital at the heart of the planned Health & Wellbeing Hub. The hub will be privately funded, meaning no diversion of normal educational funds and no use of public funding. It provides an excellent opportunity to expand the university’s offer to students, staff and the broader community.

The Health & Wellbeing Hub will be a Green Star Community development, with environmental best practice at the fore. This places some of the world’s most stringent requirements on land use, energy efficiency, material use and management of other impacts. These self-imposed requirements are an important part of delivering on one of La Trobe University’s core values which includes ‘pursuing excellence and sustainability in everything we do’.

There will be several key stages of the project that will take place throughout the last half of 2018 and into 2019:

• An Expression of Interest (EOI) process where the university seeks interest from prospective private hospital developers and operators. As part of the process the university is seeking hospital partners with the potential to deliver an integrated and expanded service offering potentially including primary care, aged care and child care services.
• Following review of the EOI submissions and a shortlisting of preferred parties, there will be a Request for Proposals (RFP) stage, with reviews and decisions undertaken at each step.
• The final key selection stage will involve the announcement of a preferred partner which may be an individual organisation or a consortium.

When a preferred partner is selected, design and planning stages can commence throughout 2019 with the view to commencing delivering the project on the ground from 2020-21.