THE new Bendigo hospital will have more than 200 new faces among its staff members within its first year of operation.

An additional 160 full-time equivalent roles, or about 220 full-time and part-time jobs, will be generated after the new hospital opens in five months’ time.

Eighty per cent of these jobs will be nursing positions, 10 per cent medical and 10 per cent allied health.

“We’ve actually been preparing for this for years, we’ve been working with our local academic partners in La Trobe and Monash (universities) to ensure a steady stream of new graduates, we’ve had greater student activity over the past few years,” Bendigo Health acting chief executive officer Robyn Lindsay said.

“We expect some local uptake of the opportunity, but we also expect across Victoria and across Australia that people will relocate to work in this world-class facility and also alongside a world-class healthcare team.”

The jobs have been secured with an additional $32.17 million injected into Bendigo Health’s 2016-17 operating budget by the state government.

Bendigo East MP Jacinta Allan said the new jobs would give more local people the opportunity to work in health in Bendigo.

The hospital is expected to create about 1000 extra jobs over the next 10 years.

“This hospital is being built for the needs of our region now, but it’s going to have the capacity to grow into the future,” Ms Allan said.

“We know Bendigo and the region’s population is going to continue to grow, more people are going to continue to come and live here and raise their family here.”

Bendigo Health chairman Bob Cameron said there would be an “enormous” amount of interest in the “first world-class hospital in regional Australia” when it opened next year.

“Some people who previously may have gone to Melbourne will come here and as a result of that, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the capacity to meet those challenges next year and in the years ahead,” he said.

Mr Cameron said the construction of the hospital was on budget and running slightly ahead of time.

This would give staff more opportunity to prepare for the move into the new facility towards the end of January 2017, he said.

The $630 million facility will include 372 inpatients beds, 72 same-day beds, 10 operating theatres, a regional cancer centre, an 80-bed mental health unit and an expanded maternity unit.

There will also be a rooftop helipad for the air ambulance and, by mid-2018, a car park for 1350 cars.