The amazing Emily Somers has a new blog post at Bravery Co. about her battle with Cancer. She’s a great friend of everyone here and her post offers an insight into a trying time. Head over to Bravery Co. and have a read.

Dr Murphy, the founder of Emerald Medical Centre was devoted to Emerald and practised medicine up to the day he died. Here’s an article from The Trader published in 1981 after he died. It is an engaging story about this important figure in Emerald’s history.

Over the past year, everyone passing the first roundabout on the main road will have seen that Emerald has a large new building. Five years in the planning and over 18 months in the execution, the extensive redevelopment and refurbishment of the Emerald Medical Centre is finally due to be complete in early March 2017!

WE plan a Community Grand Opening to coincide with the PAVE Festival (hopefully on 8 April). The building has been totally redeveloped so that it will be fit-for-purpose for the newest developments in Primary Health Care, called the Patient Centred Medical Home, or PCMH.

General Practices like Emerald Medical Centre have always tried to deliver care to its people that is tailored to and based on the needs of the patient. It tries to be comprehensive, so that every need is met, preferably locally. We attempt to coordinate your care, so that your needs that are not available locally are sourced and arranged by our team. All care is integrated, so that each member of your health team is kept abreast of your progress. In particular, we will follow up your recent visits to hospital or specialists.

We have agreement from Physio, Podiatry, Psychologists, Counsellor, Diabetes Nurse Educator, Audiologist, speech pathologist, exercise physiologist and Pathology to work on-site. We are trying to attract an XRay service to Emerald, but this is problematic. We have identified a range of specialists who will visit EMC once or twice a month so that patients will not have to travel as often. We will offer a base for the RDNS, Palliative Care and other outreach services. We already have links with the Emerald Secondary School where our GPs and Nurses will have a presence in the new Wellbeing Facility.

All GPs and Nurses are co-located upstairs around our new bright and spacious waiting room. Our vision is that our staff will enable you to enter data into your file from Tablets we provide. There is a lift for access, although we urge you to use the stairs for your own exercise. We have built a multipurpose room to enable patient education, group meetings and mild exercise and relaxation classes. The room has videoconferencing facilities to enable consultations with distant specialists and public and staff education via webinars.

The new building will be supported by a 30 kW solar system with battery back-up. We will be largely off the grid! This will enable us to provide services during occasional blackouts, but more importantly, will protect our electricity supply during a major disaster, like a bushfire. Emerald Medical Centre is the Medical Centre for the local Emerald and District Disaster Plan. This will enable us to guarantee a cool and powered Emergency Centre in a major event.

All of these innovations, services, connections and additional health workers are designed to enable us to work with individuals and our community to provide a Patient Centred Medical Home of which we will all be proud. This is a shared opportunity between Emerald Medical Centre and our Community to increase Community Security and Resilience. We look forward to working with you all to fulfil our Vision.

George Somers and the Team at Emerald Medical Centre

We are excited to announce that we are almost at completion with the building. Your new “Medical Home” is rapidly taking shape and we expect the lift to be functional in the next week or so.

Things are moving quickly on our renovations! Here’s a photo we snapped of the latest developments.

An essential part of a GP’s work is controlling long term (chronic) medical conditions. Asthma is a common chronic respiratory condition that can cause a big impact on a person’s wellbeing, and can at times be life threatening. Many asthmatics are resigned to being regularly inconvenienced by poor lung function and frequent emergency visits to a GP or hospital, naïve to what triggers asthma attacks as well as how and when to use treatments available to them.

GPs work diligently to educate asthmatic patients on such matters but this is often not enough. This is where doctors are urged to empower their patients through the use of asthma action plans to ensure patients are receiving the right medication and recognizing when higher amounts of medication are required.  Research has shown how effective action plans can be, especially for children, for controlling asthma. Its benefits include:

• Reduced chance of needing to go to hospital, or for an urgent GP visit
• Improved lung function
• Reduced number of days off work or school due to asthma

Asthma action plans are effectively a contract of written instructions agreed upon by the doctor and patient to gain control of a person’s asthma, documenting:

• Usual symptoms when well, eg no symptoms, intermittent tight chestedness.
• Usual management, eg quick action ventolin reliever inhaler, daily preventer inhaler
• Triggers for worsening asthma, eg pollen, dust, viral infection, cold, exercise.
• Signs of worsening asthma, eg tight chest, wheeze, cough, increased use of ventolin inhaler.
• How to manage worsening asthma, eg increased use of a preventer inhaler, oral steroids.
• Signs of an asthma attack and how & where to access help, eg GP or hospital.

The asthma action plan is given to the patient or parent, is stored in a safe place for future reference and copies given to kinder, school, babysitters, sports coaches, workplaces etc. The patient is urged to study and refer back to the asthma action plan to become an expert in their disease, get to know what works and hopefully achieve a much better control and avoid bad symptoms and asthma attacks entirely. The asthma action plan can be reviewed with their GP yearly to see if any modifications need to be made to assist with asthma control.

For more information visit: http://www.asthmaaustralia.org.au/asthma_action_plan.aspx
Author: Dr Chris Madden, GP, Emerald Medical Centre

Emerald Medical Centre welcomes Amy Page, our consultant in-hous pharmacist. Amy will be working with us and providing our patients with ‘Home Medicine Reviews’. A Home Medicines Review will help you to use your medicines effectively and avoid any unwanted effects you may have, meaning that you get the most out of your medicines.

A Home Medicines Review may be of benefit if you:

• Take medicines that need close monitoring of their effects on your body
• Take medicines that can have serious interactions with other medicines
• Feel unwell when you take your medicines
• Don’t experience the positive effect from your medicines that your GP expected
• Have recently been discharged from hospital and had changes to your medicines

There is no cost for a Home Medicines Review. Our GP will bulk bill you for the GP consultation, and Amy will visit your home and the report is paid for by the Australian Government. So, it won’t cost a thing. Call us today to see if you qualify.

Our patient feedback report is now available for viewing. Click through to download the report.

Click here to read the results of our recent patient survey.

Emerald Medical Centre welcomes Amy Page, our consultant in-hous pharmacist. Amy will be working with us and providing our patients with ‘Home Medicine Reviews’. A Home Medicines Review will help you to use your medicines effectively and avoid any unwanted effects you may have, meaning that you get the most out of your medicines.

A Home Medicines Review may be of benefit if you:

• Take medicines that need close monitoring of their effects on your body
• Take medicines that can have serious interactions with other medicines
• Feel unwell when you take your medicines
• Don’t experience the positive effect from your medicines that your GP expected
• Have recently been discharged from hospital and had changes to your medicines

There is no cost for a Home Medicines Review. Our GP will bulk bill you for the GP consultation, and Amy will visit your home and the report is paid for by the Australian Government. So, it won’t cost a thing. Call us today to see if you qualify.

Our patient feedback report is now available for viewing. Click through to download the report.

Click here to read the results of our recent patient survey.

Our patient feedback report is now available for viewing. Click through to download the report.

Click here to read the results of our recent patient survey.

Emerald Medical Centre are thrilled to announce our application for a second-storey extension has been approved. Here’s the new plans:

Proposed extension

Proposed elevation

To compare, here’s the Current floor plan and the Existing site plan