Lismore Base Hospital is a major public

teaching hospital A teaching hospital or university hospital is a hospital or medical center that provides medical education and training to future and current health professionals. Teaching hospitals are almost always affiliated with one or more universities a ...

in the Northern Rivers region of

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia, located in the city of Lismore. It has approximately 280 beds, and serves as the primary hospital and recognised trauma centre for the Northern New South Wales Local Health District. Due to its size and location, the hospital also serves as a rural teaching hospital for many universities based in metropolitan New South Wales and

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

. Its primary referral area consists of the Clarence and

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, a city in the United States * Richmond, London, a town in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, England * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town ...

valleys, which has a population of approximately 180,000 people.

Services

As a tertiary level referral hospital, Lismore Base Hospital grants the residents of the Northern Rivers region access to many specialist services beyond the scope of district hospital care. Offering advanced

perioperative The perioperative period is the period of a patient's surgical procedure. It commonly includes ward admission, anesthesia, surgery, and recovery. Perioperative may refer to the three phases of surgery: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperat ...

, emergency, trauma and elective surgical services, the hospital undertakes over 8,100 procedures annually including vascular and upper gastrointestinal surgeries. Additionally, the hospital provides diagnostic and interventional cardiology through its cardiac catheter laboratory and coronary care unit, has adult, adolescent and child mental health facilities, and is home to the North Coast Cancer Institute, which provides advanced oncological and haematological support to patients. Outpatient services include pain management services, and a

needle exchange program A needle and syringe programme (NSP), also known as needle exchange program (NEP), is a social service that allows injection drug users (IDUs) to obtain clean and unused hypodermic needles and associated paraphernalia at little or no cost. It i ...

unique to the region.

History

District hospital

Originally known as the "''Lismore and Richmond River Hospital''", Lismore Base Hospital was opened in 1879 with a total of eight beds, one matron and one wardsman. By this time the surrounding region had already been settled by Europeans for thirty-six years, and Lismore itself had been declared a town by the government in 1856. With the population of the surrounding districts continuing to grow through the late nineteenth century, the hospital saw an increase in patients presenting with construction injuries and infectious diseases, and had to use tents as

isolation ward In hospitals and other medical facilities, an isolation ward is a separate ward used to isolate patients with infectious diseases. Several wards for individual patients are usually placed together in an isolation unit. Design In an isolation u ...

s before more permanent accommodation could be constructed. By 1904, in response to the ever growing number of patients, a brick building was finished containing new wards and an operating theatre. Expansion was minimal for the next sixteen years when in 1920 the hospital received a new maternity ward and electric lighting. Further development of the campus was sporadic, with the opening of a paediatric ward in 1936, an improved maternity ward in 1947, and a ten bed

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

unit in 1956. In 1967 a new hospital block was constructed, which increased the number of wards, operating theatres and X-ray units. More importantly, it freed up space in some of the old wards for conversion into an

emergency department An emergency department (ED), also known as an accident and emergency department (A&E), emergency room (ER), emergency ward (EW) or casualty department, is a medical treatment facility specializing in emergency medicine, the Acute (medicine), ...

, pharmacy and outpatient clinic, which opened in 1969.

Tertiary and teaching hospital

Over the following forty years the hospital continued to slowly expand as the regional population grew, acquiring more advanced rehabilitation, mental health, oncology and cardiology services. In October 2013 a major redevelopment (3a) of the hospital began. The project is budgeted at and due to be completed in late 2016. This will be followed by Stage 3B budgeted at . On 29 November 2015 a severe hail storm caused scaffolding to collapse onto the roof of the hospital. As a result, the internal ceiling in the maternity ward fell in. There were no injuries.

References

{{Authority control Hospitals in New South Wales 1879 establishments in Australia Hospitals established in 1879