New accreditation places Wambo Medical Centre in upper echelon of medical practices

Wambo Medical Centre practice manager Nicky Jardine says she hopes the centre’s new accreditation will encourage more GPs into the region. Find out more.

Gersekowski's latest renovation at Wambo Medical Centre in Jandowae. Picture: Contributed.

A Western Downs medical practice has received AGPAL accreditation, passing the test with a perfect score.

Jandowae’s Wambo Medical Centre voluntarily applied for the service and were assessed against The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners standards, a national benchmark for medical care.

As part of the assessment the surveyors assessed the systems and processes, checked policies and procedures and interviewed members of the team to ensure they provide quality care.

Wambo Medical practice manager Nicky Jardine said the centre passed with flying colours.

“Every three years a practice has to go through the accreditation process to ensure we are following a number of standards introduced by the RACGP,” she said.

“We have a doctor and a practice manager who come out to the centre and look at our process and systems and patient responses to see how we are tracking and if we need to improve.

“The doctors and staff should be proud of themselves there’s not many centres that pass on the day with no elements that need to be fixed.

“They told us there was nothing we had to improve, it was perfect.”

Ms Jardine credited the hardworking staff for passing the accreditation process.

“It’s fantastic Wambo did exceptionally well, it is a great centre, purpose built and it is great for a small town,” she said.

“The doctors and staff work well as a team, they are very progress orientated always looking at new ways to help manage patients and looking at new technology as well as being very good communicators.

“It is still one of the only medical practices where they sit down and have lunch and coffee together and the doctor makes coffee for the staff.

“I think it’s fantastic, Jandowae is a lucky town to have such a proactive medical practice.”

Ms Jardine said she hoped the centre’s positive accreditation would encourage more GPs to work rurally.

“It's a hard industry to be in at the moment, a lot of medical centres are collapsing because it is hard to get GPs and hard to sustain a good service to patients under the stress so for a town like Jandowae to have a centre they are very lucky,” she said.

“We are hoping it will attract young GPs to work in rural Queensland particularly in Jandowae.”