Ochre Health Scottsdale: Manager’s plea as staff face ‘abuse’ in wake of doctor departures
The performance of two regional Tasmanian doctors’ surgeries have come under the microscope after the departure of two GPs. The practice manager has pleaded for calm amid high emotions.
Tasmania
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The performance of two regional Tasmanian doctors’ surgeries have come under the microscope after the departure of two GPs, with significant community unrest leading to the abuse of staff.
Leigh Heron, the practice manager of Ochre Health’s Scottsdale and Bridport clinics, published an online Q&A on September 1 addressing changes at the clinics, which are heavily reliant on locum doctors – even more so in the wake of the departures.
The Mercury has learnt that one of the recently departed doctors is Dr Ali Ghorbani, who has taken up a suite at New Town Health Hub.
“Like many medical centres in rural and regional areas around Australia, we face ongoing challenges in meeting patient demand – meaning difficulty for people to get appointments and longer wait times, especially for non-urgent issues,” Ms Heron said.
“We have developed the following Q&A in response to the community questions we have received directly and also recent commentary on social media.”
She issued a plea for residents of the North-East to not take their frustrations out on staff who were doing their best.
“Venting your frustration on our team members and abusing them is simply not okay. They are doing their best and the situation is not their fault,” she said.
“Our staff are a part of this community, like yourselves, so we would encourage you to be mindful of that when speaking to them.”
She urged community members to channel their frustrations positively: by writing to their state and federal MP, referring doctors, registrars, interns or medical students who may be interested in relocating to the area to clinic staff, and “rolling out the red carpet” when prospective doctors visit.
Ms Heron said the Scottsdale clinic was implementing several new policies in order to become more efficient and do more with less. They included:
– Assigning a GP per day to a telehealth “appointment block” focusing solely on script repeats for patients who have attended the clinic in the last six months.
– Placing patients with non-urgent needs on a cancellation list.
– Encouraging non-urgent patients to wait until 10am before calling in order to allow the team to better handle and triage the influx of calls from 8.30am when the clinic opens.
Ms Heron also addressed recent unexpected closures at Bridport, which is typically open three days per week, due to doctor availability and illness.
“We are committed to maintaining the Bridport practice long term and the need to close for a day or two does not imply we are considering closing it permanently,” Ms Heron said.
Ochre Health Tasmania regional manager Darren Fraser said the healthcare provider – Ochre Health has 17 practices in the state – was “interviewing doctors as we speak,” with four new GPs urgently required: two in Scottsdale, and two on the West Coast.
He said the regional GP crunch in Tasmania was “becoming better,” at least from Ochre’s perspective.
“We’re starting to get more people inquiring about the lifestyle, we do have a number of doctors come and work for short period of time to test the lifestyle. We’re getting a lot more inquiries than 12 months ago,” Mr Fraser said.
Pioneer woman Jennifer Bellinger recently had to cancel her Scottsdale appointment on the day of due to gastro – and will now have to wait another six weeks to secure a consultation.
She said the recent departure of two doctors compounded the problem of community members rarely seeing the same GP due to the rotation of locums and registrars.
“There’s concern in the community. What I think we need is a public meeting with Ochre so we can ask, what are your plans?” Ms Bellinger said.
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