Osborne Park Hospital expansion: Work begins on new facility for northern suburbs mums

Work has started on the Osborne Park Hospital expansion, which will be a key component to expectant mothers in the northern suburbs as the state moves its major maternity hospital to Murdoch in Perth’s south.

The milestone comes as the Cook government was forced to defend the WA hospital system’s readiness for the upcoming flu season amid new record ambulance ramping figures. 

The government released renders of the new hospital on Tuesday, which included 70 new beds across a new six-storey and four-storey building with expanded women and baby facilities, a family birth centre, obstetrics theatres and outpatient clinics.

The expansion is expected to be finished in 2029 and is included in the $1.8 billion cost for the new women’s and babies’ hospital under construction in Murdoch, which is also anticipated to open in 2029.

The expansion was included in the new hospital build to boost higher-level maternity services in Perth’s north, owing to the controversial decision to move women and babies services 20 kilometres south of the Perth CBD.

A leaked women and babies hospital tender update from April 2025 suggested both the Murdoch and Osborne Park projects were already $150 million over budget and running a year late.

Early last year, control of the project was taken off WA Health and given to the newly formed Office of Major Infrastructure Delivery.

Health Infrastructure Minister John Carey stood by the original price and timeline when asked on Tuesday.

“To date, all the advice to me is we are tracking very well,” he said.

“What I would say is, through the new lens, through the Office of Major Infrastructure Delivery, we have re-looked at how we do things, and we’ve accelerated procurement processes, and that’s being demonstrated in projects like today.”

Health data questioned

The Cook government has faced increasing pressure from the opposition over health after it was revealed ambulance ramping figures hit a new February record this year, prompting concerns about the state’s ability to deal with the upcoming flu season.

Health Minister Meredith Hammat said she continued to look at what they could do to address ramping.

“We are putting a lot of additional money, effort and resources into addressing the issues of ramping, but I’ve said many times before that we are dealing with a context, we’ve got a growing population and an ageing population as well, and we have seen more older West Australians who are medically cleared for discharge in hospital but unable to get the care that they need,” she said.

The state government last week announced its $140 million 2026 winter strategy aimed at improving bed capacity and diverting unnecessary emergency department presentations away from hospitals.

Included in the strategy document was a claim that “last year we saw almost 1.2 million emergency department visits and 700,000 public hospital admissions”.

That claim was repeated by Hammat last week but WA Health’s own emergency department data shows from January to December 2025 there were only 1.03 million ED admissions.

When asked about the figure on Tuesday, Hammat said it was a rounded-up figure from the annual report, which suggested there were 1.17 million ED admissions from July 2024 to June 2025.

“We were relying on the information that’s published in their annual report. That’s where that data came from,” she said.

When pressed whether the strategy could be believed if those crucial figures were not exact Hammat talked up the document.

“What we’ve done with the winter strategy is put significant funds into that plan, $140 million,” she said.

“We are really focused on delivering outcomes that West Australians want to see in respect of ramping, that’s the focus of that plan, and that is the work that we will continue to do.”

Hammat also conceded she “misspoke” during the winter strategy announcement last week when she said the purchase of the St John of God Mount Lawley Hospital would add 200 beds to the public system, given 100 of those beds were already contracted to the public system.

She said $61 million from the strategy set aside for the purchase of surge bed capacity from private hospitals would allow the public system to secure up to 200 beds during the winter period.

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