2 August 2019: The Mallacoota Medical Centre now providing our services from the new community owned building. It is a warm, light-filled environment that offers a comfortable patient experience and a state-of-the-art work environment for current and future staff.
Along with the new building we have consolidated a number of new services that have been made possible with the pursuit of grant funding, the support of the community, a fair amount of tenacity and access to some fantastic, dedicated health professionals.
All of these services are offered at no (or low) cost to everyone in the community.
MENTAL HEALTH CARE IN MALLACOOTA
The Mallacoota Medical Centre aims to provide timely, safe and professional mental health care, in a sensitive way, that values your privacy and is provided by a known trusted health professional.
The Medical Centre offers access to two highly-trained counsellors, Joanna Heman (mental health worker) and Monica Blaney (psychologist). They visit Mallacoota every fortnight and both travel down from their busy practices in the Bega Valley.
MENTAL HEALTH CARE FOR MALLACOOTA 2019-2020
How do get to see a counsellor if I need to?
To arrange to see one of our counsellors, just make an appointment with Dr Sara or Dr. Mubashar, who can then offer you a free (medicare bulk-billed) “Care Plan” that will help you to set goals for your care and co-ordinate referrals to other health care providers. The Care Plan will enable you up to 10 free (medicare bulk-billed) sessions with either Jo or Monica every 12 months.
Our Mental Health Service is free and all visits are strictly confidential.
If you would prefer not to see a doctor first, you can access our counsellors under a private fee arrangment. Please speak to our staff for more information.
TEEN CLINIC
The Mallacoota Medical Centre is proud to open Teen Clinic services in Mallacoota.
Carla DeLa Rue (Registered Nurse) and Helen Bryan (Registered Nurse) are able to provide access to a wrap-around, one-stop-shop for the health needs of all teenagers.
How does it work?
Teen clinic provides an opportunity for local young people to have a confidental chat with one of our qualified and friendly nurses.
If your problem falls outside of the nurse’s area of expertise you may be referred on to a General Practitioner or other local service provider.
Teens may attend Teen Clinic for a wide range of medical and non-medical issues such as:
- General health
- STI screening
- Contraception advice
- Mental health issues
- Relationship concerns
- Health education
- Homelessness
- Family issues
Teen Clinic is a free service and all visits are striclty confidential.
How do I get help from the Teen Clinic?
Just turn up to the Mallacoota Medical Centre on a Monday or Thursday afternoon, any time between 12.30 and 5pm. There’s no need to make an appointment. Bring your friend or a parent, or come by yourself.
If you are at school, the clinic is available over the school lunch break and after school.
If you would like some more information about Teen Clinic – google “Teen Clinic” or find the website at www.teenclinic.com.au
- In the future we have plans for launching
- cardio-pulmonary rehabilitation services
- Home-based exercise programs for patients with complex needs
- point of care testing – warfarin levels/ultrasound
- Telemedicine – support for access to distant specialist services
- visiting cardiology clinic; and
- co-ordination of health care teams and complex needs
FEES
If you have any concerns about your ability to meet the cost of any of our services – please make our receptionists aware when you book your appointment so that you can discuss this with your doctor. The Medical Centre billing policies are designed to ensure the continuation of our services and we take all peoples ability to access essential health care locally very seriously. If you have are not in a position to meet the cost of any of our services, our doctors or staff would like the opportunity to discuss this with you.
A note from Dr. Sara
It is hard to believe that the Mallacoota Medical Centre has finally opened the doors of the new community owned medical centre property. It is the first stage of our town’s long battle to find a way to provide care for the frail and dying who require 24 hr residential care and it would not be possible without the contribution of many community minded and caring people.
To reach this point, the journey so far has strengthened Medical Centre’s ability to provide the whole community access to ongoing locally provided health services. Its now hard to imagine that only two years ago the service was hanging in the balance and there is no doubt that this could not have been acheived without the support from many individuals and organisations in the community.
Not just from donations, but lots of time, advice, inspiration (when it was running low), vision, expertise and kind words from many different sources have made all the difference, especially when the wider health economic and workforce landscape seems to be become bleaker each year. The reputation of the town to strive to look after its own and also to look after it’s health profesionals, will act as an antidote to those problems now and in the future. This kind of vision for a way through, I believe, can only mean better health care for everyone.
In its new home, the Mallacoota Medical Centre continues to endeavour to maintain the high standards set over the years by a handful of dedicated local doctors. We are currently in the process of the large task of safely archiving all the existing paper files at the Medical Centre. From this work we can remind ourselves of the many people in town who have sought care at the Mallacoota Medical Centre since it opened in the 1980s. That kind of continuity of care is quite astounding.
The external envirnoment at the Medical Centre looks somewhat different now to what it did back then, but the core ethos of our rural General Practice remains, that is, ensuring that everyone in the Mallacoota Community has access to the most timely, comprehensive, personal and quality care possible in our small remote town.
Unfortunately there are some services that have have been lost – in particular After Hours Care.
However, I believe that with the assistance of the community, Mallacoota will eventually convince the various govenment agencies who fund health services, to bring our town up to par with other towns in Victoria and Australia. This includes equitable funding for Residential Aged Care beds to our area and equitable access to 24 hour nursing support (nurse triage and residential care).
So we move on and continue
to try to fill gaps and give our patients as good as, or even better care than
our city counter-parts and at a lesser cost to our patients than
our city-counter parts. We look forward to working together as health
professionals and community members to continue to improve the services that
our local community needs