Horowhenua Health Centre One Year On

01/07/2008 | Horowhenua Health Centre

Horowhenua Health Centre’s one-stop shop concept has drawn significant praise from health providers, staff and patients as the purpose-built facility in Levin prepares to celebrate its first birthday.

The opportunity for patients on the one visit to see a GP, undergo x-rays or blood tests and have their prescriptions filled has been given the biggest tick on the centre’s 12-month report card.

An afternoon tea, complete with birthday cake, is to be held at the complex on Wednesday (July 2) to celebrate the first day, a year ago, when staff moved into the $16.1 million centre.

Medlab Central’s Collection Services Manager, Jane Kendall, said staff enjoyed being part of a one-stop shop team and found the centre to be a real asset to the community.

“It has been, and continues to be, a positive move for both Medlab staff and patients who now have modern health centre facilities and the support of other services within the building,” she said.

Ms Kendall said a continuing large demand had kept staff busy collecting samples from hospital and community patients with about 27,000 blood tests being conducted in the past year.

Kirsty Woolford, Practice Manager at Horowhenua Community Practice, said its GPs and staff enjoyed the centre’s modern, bright surroundings, and sharing the facility with secondary care services had enhanced working relationships within the multi-disciplinary teams. The practice had seen more than 26,000 patients since it moved into the complex.

“Initially, there was a transition period while patients and staff became accustomed to the new setting, and over the last several months there has been positive feedback from our patients with the centre’s new rooms and the one-stop shop concept,” said Ms Woolford.

She said it appeared there was still some perception from members of the public that MidCentral Health provided the GPs, and that the centre provided 24-hour emergency cover, which was not the case.

“HCP is a private general practitioner company whose dedicated team endeavours to assist in most medical emergencies during normal business hours, depending on work loads,” said Ms Woolford.

Horowhenua PHO Manager, Dawn Wilson, said its clients had benefited from having so many services under the same roof and the centre provided good opportunities to network with other health professionals.

She said it also allowed the PHO to provide accurate and informed education on its role to other health services in the facility and this had been instrumental in bringing down previous barriers.

Ms Wilson said staff enjoyed accessing and liaising with other providers, such as Medlab and the respiratory nurse practitioners, the opportunity to discuss referrals “face to face”, and to benefit communication between primary and secondary care.

Broadway Radiology’s Operations Manager, Leigh Jewell, said more than 8100 x-rays had been performed at the centre during the year (at an average of 33 examinations per day) with 64 percent of them performed under the community-referred radiology contract.

“Although the throughput has significantly increased since July 1 last year, the x-ray facility operates without a waiting list,” she said. “Results are available within two days and often dispatched to referrers on the same day the x-ray is performed.”

Health Centre Co-ordinator, Robyn Shaw, said a number of challenges had been faced during the past 12 months, but the integration of centre staff with private providers was coming together and starting to prove beneficial.

“The centre is being well utilised and the community itself seems a lot more positive now - there doesn’t seem to be the critics out there that were there initially.”

New services such as respiratory and community cardiology had been welcomed, she said, and those involved with the mobile surgical bus service, which visited every five weeks, described the facility as one of the best in which they worked.

“We’ve got a great setup and need to use it to our advantage and try and get as many speciality services on board as possible,” she said.

MidCentral District Health Board’s Chief Executive Officer, Murray Georgel, said the centre signalled a change in the way health services were delivered in a community setting.
“We’ve moved away from having a lot of hospitals around the country to having significant bases where there are hospital services and community health centres. That’s what we’ve got in Horowhenua.”

Mr Georgel said some people would be realising the benefits of that change immediately, but for others, it would take a lot longer and be progressive over a number of years.

“We will see the health of the population generally improve because of the increased access through the centre and the wide range of health providers all working together for the best interests of the individual,” he said.