Decades of planning will have culminated in Orange emerging as a medical hub rivalled only in size and choice by metropolitan and coastal areas.

In five years tens of thousands of patients will have already passed through the doors of the $250 million Orange Base Hospital, which will have celebrated its third birthday.

A drive along Forest Road by 2014 will be a vastly different experience than it is today as the precinct hums to the sound of hundreds of doctors, nurses, patients, mental health workers and support staff going about their business.

The medical sector will have emerged as one of the top five employers in Orange should the proposed $125 million Orange Private Hospital, which will also include a motel, residential accommodation, day surgery centre, aged care centre and oncology centre, be open for business by 2014.

The opening of a new private hospital could see the 65 bed Dudley Private Hospital remodelled into an aged care facility.

In five years the city won’t just be treating the ill but will be training those who will end up caring for them at the $61.5 million School of Dentistry and Health Services at Charles Sturt University.

“I think we will become a real medical hub and the critical issue is the education base where these health professionals have an opportunity to continue their development,” said chairperson of the Orange Health Liaison Committee, Cr Gavin Priestley.

“The university and TAFE are each going to play big roles in that and if anything, I think that’s more exciting and important than the new infrastructure.”

A $2 million Ronald McDonald House and a $2 million CareWest Lodge rounds out the city’s health-sector building boom.

However, NSW Nurses Association representative Linda Griffiths said new incentives would have to exist by 2014 to lure and retain the number of staff required for a such a large regional medical hub.

“It’s all wonderful for Orange to have brand new buildings and facilities but we won’t agree to all those new beds being opened unless there are sufficient staffing levels,” she said.

“Some of the new services that will exist, like the forensic mental health unit, need the expertise of people who are few and far between and the health service is going to have to work really hard not just now but in the future to attract those professional people to Orange.”

The Greater Western Area Health Service will also have been abolished should the NSW Opposition win the next state election.