Modbury Hospital in Adelaide's northeast rides out privatisation and Transforming Health bumps to expand
Modbury Hospital (bottom left), a teaching hospital affiliated with Adelaide University, opened in Adelaide's northeast suburbs in 1973, With its emergency department restored, the hospital gained a $29 million upgrade (bottom right) announced in 2021 and a $117 million expansion (top), announced in 2024, including a cancer centre and mental health beds.
Modbury Hospital, in Adelaide’s politically-sensitive northeast suburbs, had a turbulent history after its opening under the Don Dunstan’s South Australian Labor government in 1973.
The first bump for the hospital was in 1995 when it was privatised by the Dean Brown Liberal state government by handing its management to Melbourne-based private operator Healthscope. By the 2002 state election, the local community was demanding that the South Australian government take back administration of the hospital. In 2002 the state Labor government was returned to office and, at the 2006 poll, promised that the hospital would return to public control.That happened in 2007, three years before Healthscope’s contract expired.
South Australia’s Health Care Plan 2007-16 identified Modbury Hospital as both a high-volume elective surgery site and a hospital that would tailor its services to meet the needs of the ageing population in the north-eastern suburbs by expanding its rehabilitation, aged care and palliative care.
Against Jay Weatherill Labor government’s 2015 Transforming Health strategy initial review for most of the northeast region’s rehabilitation services to be at the Hampstead centre, Modbury gained an expanded rehabilitation hub including a specialist ambulatory rehabilitation centre (SpARC). The real jolt from Transforming Health strategy, according to former head of obstetrics at the Flinders Medical Centre, professor Warren Jones, meant that “Don Dunstan’s successors have set about degrading this once proud hospital (Modbury) so that it will be rendered dysfunctional and potentially dangerous.”
Transforming Health's move was to downgrade Modbury Hospital’s emergency department’s 24/7 care to non-life-threatening cases, with the hospital concentrating on becoming a centre of excellence for elective surgery. A dedicated ambulance shuttle from Modbury Hospital would take urgent cases to Lyell McEwin Hospital in Elizabeth. Medical or major surgical emergencies and complications would be transferred to the Lyell McEwin Hospital, Royal Adelaide Hospital or elsewhere.
The Steven Marshall state Liberal government reversed the Transforming Health strategy by restoring surgical capacity and 24/7 emergency services at Modbury but its promise to set up a high-dependency unit at Modbury became highly-controversial during the election campaign. In 2019, the Liberal government announced Modbury Hospital’s $96 million upgrade with more palliative care and 26 extra general care beds.
The Peter Malinauskas Labor government, elected in 2022, released designs in 2024 for a significant $117 million expansion of Modbury Hospital, including 44 new mental health beds, a new cancer centre and a five-storey multideck carpark for more than 300 vehicles. The state-of-the-art mental health precinct included 24 mental health rehabilitation beds and a 20-bed older persons mental health unit – boosting the hospital’s overnight bed capacity by 20%. The new cancer centre would have 12 chemotherapy chairs, seven outpatient consulting rooms, and three interview rooms to support nursing, pharmacy education and clinical trials.
The return of cancer services at Modbury Hospital (a teaching hospital affiliated with Adelaide University), scheduled for 2025, would end a decade without them.
