The new Footscray Hospital is much bigger, more modern, offers many more services and is much more conveniently located than its predecessor.
But according to Western Health volunteer visitor guide Sharon Gorton the new hospital, which opened on Wednesday 18 February, is a big upgrade in another area too.
“Oh I think the design,” Ms Gorton said of the biggest difference she’d noticed in her role greeting visitors at both hospitals.
“Ninety per cent of people coming through the front doors at the (new) Footscray Hospital all need the services located just here at main reception,” she said while speaking to Star Weekly in the foyer on the opening morning.
“We no longer have to take people from the Gordon Street entrance all the way through to Eleanor Street for emergency or out patients.
“Most people are not in an ambulance when they’re coming for specialist appointments and they’d come to the wrong entrance and it was really a struggle, whereas now they come to the main entrance and everything is right here.”
Ms Gorton has been volunteering as a visitor guide for Western Health for the last seven years, and has lived in the western suburbs for much longer than that.
She said it was exciting that something that had been talked about for so long was finally a reality.
“It will take a lot of pressure off the other hospitals in the area and provide such a wonderful service to people like myself,” Ms Gorton said, before adding: “I don’t want to be a patient.”
