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Remote health services

Posted By Exmouth resident

"Remote health services"

About: Exmouth Health Service

(as the patient),

We live in a small country town in the North West, called Exmouth with around 2500 permanent residents, but that population explodes to around 9000 during our peak tourist season. We only have a hospital and no private GP services, so on average the waiting time to get an appointment for a GP at the hospital is around four weeks.

I believe most people including myself just avoid the place altogether unless something is serious, which is not a good thing. There is also no GP that caters for women’s health needs. This means if you need book an appointment for a Pap Smear or something like that you have to wait for the ‘Women’s Health Clinic’ to arrive. I’ve waited for up to eight months to get an appointment for this.

Luckily I had a trip to Perth scheduled so I booked in for a Pap Smear there instead. Turns out I had a small papilloma that had to be cut out. Thankfully I was able to squeeze the treatment in while I was in Perth otherwise it would have been months before I would have been seen in Exmouth let alone have a procedure done. Women’s health is very important but I feel is completely overlooked in this town. 

Also if you have anything relatively minor but you need medication for such as tonsillitis, sea ulcer or anything else you need antibiotics or similar for, you have to just sit in triage at the hospital and wait for hours to potentially be seen by a doctor. This puts loads of pressure on the triage service but by the time you could get a doctors appointment (generally four weeks later) your sickness would be over. 

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Responses

Response from WA Country Health Service Midwest 4 years ago
We have made a change
WA Country Health Service Midwest

Submitted on 23/09/2019 at 7:27 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 24/09/2019 at 9:07 AM

Dear Exmouth resident,

Thank you for sharing your experience in relation to the Women’s Health Clinic at Exmouth Hospital. I have discussed your feedback with Tamara Sweeney, Operations Manager Gascoyne and we were very concerned to hear that you have waited 8 months for an appointment for a pap smear at Exmouth Hospital Women’s Health Clinic. We would like to investigate your concerns further and encourage you to make contact with us so that we can do this. If you are able to do this, please contact Tamara on 9941 0301 or email Tamara.Sweeney@health.wa.gov.au. Alternatively, you can contact me on 9956 8695 or email liz.kelly@health.wa.gov.au.

We would like to reassure you and the community that the waiting time you experienced is significantly longer than the usual wait time. A Women’s Health Clinic is scheduled this week and has appointments available. A further two Women’s Health Clinics are scheduled for October and appointments are still available. In addition to the Women’s Health Clinic, all Exmouth Hospital GPs provide pap smear services. If a patient needs a pap smear and is unable to get an appointment in the Women’s Health Clinic they are also welcome to book a GP appointment. The current wait time for a GP appointment is seven working days.

As part of managing women’s health, Exmouth Hospital has developed a reminder and scheduling system to call patients in relation to their upcoming due date for pap smears and to assist them in scheduling their appointments into future Women’s Health Clinics. The Women’s Health Clinics are scheduled depending on patient demand and staffing availability.

We really value the feedback of our consumers and would value being able to continue this conversation with you and address your concerns.

Kind regards

Liz

A/Coordinator of Executive Services

WACHS Midwest

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