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Newcastle's only private mental health care facilities will be moved from Merewether to Maitland in order to more than double the number of available beds.
A multi-million dollar redevelopment of Healthe Care Australia's Lingard Private Hospital is almost complete but it means there is no longer room for its mental health ward.
Recent upgrades at Maitland Private include a state-of-the-art 25-bed mental health ward which should open by the end of next month.
Healthe Care CEO Steve Atkins says there are also plans for Toronto Private to get a similar ward of 20 beds in the coming months.
"And the challenge at Lingard was that we were reducing down the number of beds available," he said.
"The service was going to reduce in its volume to a size that just didn't make a lot of sense in terms of the necessary service provision.
"The net effect is that we've moved from a unit at Lingard now which running at 20-odd beds, through to a unit at Maitland and Toronto of about 45 beds."
Mr Atkins says the move from Merewether to Maitland makes demographic sense and will more double the number of available beds.
"About a third of our patients come from the Newcastle area, a third come from the Lake Macquarie area, and a third come from that Hunter Valley area.
"Those people all currently go to Lingard, so I guess while the people living in Newcastle may need to travel a little bit further than they've been used to.
"For the people coming from Lake Macquarie and from Maitland, the opposite is the case.
"I think what we're doing makes sense in terms of demography."
Topics: mental-health, healthcare-facilities, merewether-2291, maitland-2320, toronto-2283
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