The hospital contains the only trauma centre in New South Wales outside the Sydney Metropolitan Area, and has the busiest emergency department in the state.

[citation needed] The John Hunter health complex consists of 820 beds in total, and is co-located next to the 174 bed Newcastle Private Hospital, as well as the regional Hunter Area Pathology Service which provides tertiary level pathology testing.

JHH Interventional Cardiologists have experience in percutaneous techniques such as TAVI and balloon aortic valvulopasty Respiratory medicine – Including sub-specialties of general respiratory, cystic fibrosis & sleep medicine.

While a full page advertisement taken out by the John Hunter Hospital in the Newcastle Herald on 30 January 1991 references three notable John Hunters, the advertisement only explicitly references that the hospital was named after the former Governor, and although the advertisement states "Here's to the Governor who forged a nation, here's to the John Hunters who achieved so much in medical science, and here's to our John Hunter Hospital", the advertisement only explicitly references the former Governor of New South Wales as the namesake of the hospital, stating "...[S]everal dedicated and visionary people made enormous contributions toward building a nation that would one day stand as an example to the rest of the world.

[3] In January 2025, a hospital administrator accidentally sent an email to all junior doctors employed at the hospital calling them a "workforce of clinical marshmellows [sic]", after doctors questioned the decision to roster them for 10 night shifts in a row.