Perth's Health Precinct: The Medical Hub of Western Australia

Perth's hospital network, anchored by the Royal Perth Hospital in the CBD, the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital at Nedlands, and the Fiona Stanley Hospital at Murdoch that opened in 2014 as the state's newest and largest hospital, provides the public health care that the 2.7-million-person Western Australian population requires for the acute, the specialist, and the emergency medical care that the state health system delivers through the large teaching hospitals, the regional hospitals, and the community health services that the statewide health network encompasses. The concentration of the specialist medical services in the Perth metropolitan hospitals, reflecting the distance from the WA rural and the remote communities to the specialist care that the hospital network provides, creates the specialist medical hub that the country and the remote Western Australian patients travel to for the tertiary health care that the local hospitals cannot provide.

Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital at Nedlands, the major teaching hospital of the University of Western Australia's medical school that trains the doctors and the clinical researchers in the partnership between the hospital and the university's medical faculty, provides the academic health centre function that sustains the quality of the Perth medical care through the research and the teaching culture that the university hospital's intellectual environment creates. The hospital's neuroscience, cardiology, and oncology programs, among the most specialised in Western Australia, attract the clinical talent that sustains the specialist quality that the state's health system requires for the most complex medical presentations that the population generates. The medical research that the QEII Medical Centre precinct houses in the Harry Perkins Institute and the Telethon Kids Institute creates the biomedical research infrastructure that Perth has built as the intellectual foundation of the health innovation sector.

The Fiona Stanley Hospital at Murdoch, the 783-bed hospital that the Serco-operated facility management model and the Brookfield Multiplex construction created as the most expensive hospital in Australian history and the largest hospital in Western Australia, provides the southern metropolitan population with the acute and the specialist services that the northern hospitals' distance and the capacity constraints create the access challenge for in the growing southern metropolitan area. The hospital's research connections to the Murdoch University and the specialised programs including the rehabilitation medicine and the complex surgical specialties sustain the academic and the clinical quality that the flagship hospital requires to serve the southern metropolitan population that the Fiona Stanley catchment encompasses.

The Royal Perth Hospital's transition from the state's largest hospital to the specialist and the emergency hospital that serves the CBD and the inner metropolitan population following the opening of the Fiona Stanley, creating the more focused clinical mission for the historic hospital that has served Perth's health needs since 1855, reflects the hospital network planning that the Western Australian Government has used to distribute the specialist clinical services across the metropolitan hospital network rather than concentrating all the complexity in the historically dominant Royal Perth. The hospital's location in the CBD and the emergency services role that the city workers, the tourist presentations, and the inner metropolitan population generate for the Royal Perth ED sustains the hospital's importance in the metropolitan network despite the specialist service redistribution that the Fiona Stanley's opening enabled.

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