Towards a Patient Centred Medical Home!
Written By Emerald Medical Centre
Posted February 15, 2017
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 30Kw 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
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