La Trobe U intends to create a “health and welbeing hub” at its Bundoora campus which will include a, “private hospital, primary health care clinic, aged care and child care centres.” LT U says this will address an existing undersupply of services in the surrounding community and is “one of the first elements of a university commitment to establish La Trobe as the economic engine room of Melbourne’s north.”

The university is adamant that the project, which expand an existing private hospital, will not involve “university diversion of educational funds and no use of public funding.”

Good-o, but LT U Bundoora teaches nursing, dentistry, palliative care, a range of rehabilitation services and various medical sciences and a hospital and health hub will surely be a sources of training places for students and jobs for graduates.

But not, that’s not, in letters of blood, a first step towards a medical school.

La Trobe U partnered with Charles Sturt U over many years in a campaign for the federal government to fund their proposed two-uni Murray Darling Medical School, which was rejected in the budget in favour of a joint programme hosted by a range of universities with regional training schools.

However, a La Trobe spokesman says the university is happy with the new Commonwealth brokered arrangement, where medical science graduates from its Bendigo and Wodonga campuses can enter the University of Melbourne’s medicine degree at Shepparton.

Good-o again, but what applies now may not once the new hospital opens and if a future VC decides real universities have med schools.

Want a bet the medical deans lobby will open a new dossier on La Trobe’s hospital and file it under TF, for threats, future?