The new chair of the Northern NSW Local Health District board says overseeing development of the new Tweed hospital will be his main priority in the role.

Nurses at Ballina Hospital closed two beds and up to four treatment chairs on Monday night as they highlighted the dangers of having only one nurse on in emergency for the night shift.

Since 1985, the proportion of Australian children who are overweight has doubled and the prevalence of obesity trebled.

Emergency departments across the region continued to experience high demand in the early part of this year, according to the latest Bureau of Health Information report. 

Ballina Hospital patients are set to benefit from a new, state-of-the-art operating theatre complex and medical imaging upgrades under a $7.35 million redevelopment, the government says.

NSW Labor has called on the Berejiklian government to explain how it is going to fill some 53 unfilled health and hospital jobs in the Northern NSW Local Health District, which covers the area from Grafton to the border.

A group of locals is fighting to save the old Byron District Hospital site from developers and instead have it placed in community hands.

The first two months' operation of new staff rostering arrangements at Kyogle Memorial Hospital will see 76 shifts undertaken without a single licensed security staff member rostered on, according to the Health Services Union.

HSU members at Tweed Hospital are conducting a one-hour stop work meeting today over the treatment of two security officers who, the union says, have been disciplined over the way they conducted a violence prevention training program.

The NSW opposition is calling for an urgent parliamentary inquiry into NSW’s Mental Health facilities following the death of a patient in Lismore’s Adult Mental Health Unit. CCTV footage released yesterday showed the patient wandering naked and covered in faeces, falling at least 25 times.