All eyes on what happens next in community push to split Hunter New England Local Health District

The petition had more than 16,000 signatures and made its way into NSW parliament last week.

It appears moving forward New England could adopt the Murrumbidgee model, where doctors have a right of private practice, but are employed by the hospital.

New England Visions 2030 is a Think Tank group who explore major issues influencing the future of the wider region.

Institute convenor Maria Hitchcock played a big part in circulating and recording the names on the petition.

"As a region we need to keep fighting for it," she said.

Read also:

"We know we have huge support in the community, we know the petition is there, it's a matter of our leaders monitoring the situation and fighting for more community ownership.

"I believe the Murrumbidgee model has an element of community control underlying it, so we'll see how that goes.

"If we're still unhappy with it, then we need to make our feelings known.

Ms Hitchcock was critical of Regional Health Minister Bronnie Taylor and her responses throughout the process.

"The minister right from start was never going to budge and that was pretty obvious from when she came up and talked to everybody," she said.

"I thought it was very cynical of her to release her response to the media a few weeks beforehand, almost to say there was no point having a debate."

Ms Hitchcock said a major focus of the split was giving community control back to New England

"It was a very big thing in our region and it was because we've been poorly served," she said.

"Our group are going to write to all the mayors, thanking them for their support, and if they can keep monitoring the situation.

"This was probably one of the first times the people of this region came together under one campaign; we need to keep that momentum going."

"Having Adam (Marshall) involved in this will help tremendously because he will make sure the monitoring is done.

Ms Hitchcock said Inverell was one of the main areas where the petition had the most support.

"As the person who opened up the envelopes and counted the petition sheets day after day I know how strong Inverell was in this campaign.

"So many petition sheets came from the area, the people from Inverell will be very interesting in keeping tabs on this issue."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: