Blue Mountains: Paediatricians’ bid to beat coronavirus lockdown
Time is running out to open a much-needed paediatric clinic in the Blue Mountains before the state goes into a complete coronavirus lockdown.
The Blue Mountains News
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A medical service is seeking urgent permission to open a much-needed paediatric clinic in the Blue Mountains before the state goes into a complete coronavirus lockdown.
KidMed at Katoomba has lodged a proposal with Blue Mountains Council to renovate and open a new paediatric clinic at Woodford, as council moves towards a “risk-based” approach towards the processing of applications.
“We’re working with council to expedite the process, which is quite hard in this current situation,” KidMed’s practice manager, Anna Minasyan, told The Blue Mountains News.
She said they worry NSW will go into a complete lockdown due to the coronavirus in as little as two days’ time and the area will then be left without doctors to care for our children during this pandemic.
“We have many, many patients ... 3000 in the Blue Mountains and Lithgow area,” Ms Minasyan said.
“Now, paediatric services in the hospitals are being reduced. They’re not taking new patients.
“Our waiting lists at the moment, depending on the problem, is four months to up to a year.”
Ms Minaysan said the current social distancing rule has put even more pressure on their clinic as the number of people in the waiting room has had to be scaled back, as per the rule.
She said once the new clinic is opened they will be able to see more patients and hire more children’s doctors to service the area.
The clinic’s resident paediatrician Dr Arman Babajanyan has made a public plea on Facebook for a fire safety engineer and BCA consultant to provide urgent advice, so the internal works can get started.
Council’s spokeswoman on Tuesday told The News development applications are currently being prioritised and inspections undertaken “when critical.”
“Given this necessary prioritisation, there is expected to be an increase in processing times for all applications and some delay in non-urgent inspections,” she said.
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