The new appointments at the hospital in areas like cardiology, oncology, and haematology are thanks to funding from the state government's 2019-2020 budget.

"We will be recruiting additional staff to deliver these appointments," Bendigo Health executive director of clinical operations Robyn Lindsay said.

"At a minimum, that will be about 20 additional staff so a combination of doctors, nurses, allied health and some administrative staff to make sure these appointments are delivered in a really timely way."

The hospital has provided about 90,000 specialist appointments in the past year.

The state government funding will help Bendigo Health either open or expand 22 specialist clinics within the next 12 months. There are also a number of clinics that will be opened in partnership with smaller rural services.

"It helps patients avoid unnecessary travel to Melbourne, but also for those in the north west of the state who might otherwise need to come to Bendigo," Ms Lindsay said.

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Bendigo Health has measures in place to fill the required roles, Ms Lindsay said.

"There are some challenges for us in particular sub-specialities and that's where we will work with metro hospitals to build a collaboration," she said.

"But Bendigo Health is in a situation that is a little bit different than a few years ago.

"We always had a world class workforce, but now we have world class facilities for them to work in. Recruitment of nurses, allied health staff and doctors is much better than it used to be."

The recruitment process will be phased out over the coming months.

"Some of them are already in place so we've made a good start on half of the clinics," Ms Lindsay said.

"The other half will come on board right through to February and March next year."

Victorian Minister for Health Jenny Mikakos, who toured Bendigo Health on Wednesday, said the government would be supporting hospitals to fill the new roles.

"Our health services look to recruit doctors both across Australia and internationally all the time," Ms Mikakos said. "At the moment, our health services recruit individually.

"But one thing I am looking to do as Health Minister is centralise services so it is done in a more coordinated fashion and we haven't got health services competing with each other as part of those recruitment campaigns."

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