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First visit to Cowes Medical Hub

Posted By neptunebw56

"First visit to Cowes Medical Hub"

About: Cowes Phillip Island Health Hub

(as the patient),

My spouse had a recent operation in Melbourne and after a week one of the wounds became infected. We were in Melbourne at the time but decided to wait and visit the new hub in Cowes our place of residence.

We arrived at late morning on a Sunday, and waited many hours to see a doctor. I believe the hub was not that busy and there were six patients before us, each receiving over 30 minutes' consultation. In my opinion, most of the patients had minor issues, someone wanted to change their blood pressure tablets that the hub would not subscribe. They were told to go to their local GP, and this took over half an hour.

I feel like the hub is being used as a weekend GP alternative rather than waiting a week for an appointment at the Cowes Medical Centre. Hours later we were seen and within 15 minutes the wound was dressed and antibiotics prescribed. We feel that moving to Cowes was maybe the wrong move especially with the poor medical service we receive - even though we pay for private health insurance. The medical centre has ceased weekend service.

Reception

Reception


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Responses

Response from Jan Child, CEO, Bass Coast Health 4 years ago
Jan Child
CEO,
Bass Coast Health

Submitted on 12/09/2019 at 4:32 PM
Published on Care Opinion at 4:38 PM

picture of Jan Child

Dear neptunebw56,

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback. I would be happy to talk through your feedback on the phone as well if that would be useful (0472846355).

It's impossible for me (or anyone except for the clinical staff) to comment on the people who were treated before you but what I can say is that we treat people in turn, except when there is someone sicker. If people's clinical needs are assessed at the same level of acuity, then we treat according to the time people arrived. If they are sicker, they get seen first. We only have one doctor and one nurse and so we are not like a GP practice where we have three or 4 doctors seeing patients consecutively.

What I can tell you is that our data is very clear that the busy times are between 8am and 7pm and before or after that we (generally) have very low wait times. I always encourage people to come in those unsociable hours to avoid a wait, if they can.

I promise you that we have no intention to replace the local GP service who do a great job. I can also reassure you that the renovations are about to be finalised for the Urgent Care Centre which will mean we will have extra treatment spaces to treat people from the end of October. This will also assist.

Finally, we are about to commence planning on a Community Hospital for Cowes which will see an expanded service yet again. Please pardon our progress and bear with us whilst we make these improvements at Cowes, and at our expanding Wonthaggi Hospital. I am confident these service expansions will give you some confidence about health care in Cowes.

I hope your wound is healing well.

Kind Regards,

Jan.

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