Clinic Overview
The Hawkins Medical Clinic
Located in the regional centre of the South East of South Australia - combining the attractiveness of rural practice with the support of a city practice.
The Hawkins Medical Clinic is a modern purpose built general practice clinic for seventeen + General Practitioners with a significant emphasis on training with minimal after hours work. Mount Gambier has a compliment of local specialists and resident hospital medical staff to service the regional population of approximately 30,000.
Great local facilities in the township equidistant to the capital cities of Adelaide and Melbourne (1 hour flight) or (4.5 hr hour drive).
Hawkins Medical Clinic - Outline
The clinic operates from modern purpose built offices originally opened in 1974.
Renovations in 2001, 2009 and 2010 provide improved treatment facilities and additional consulting rooms, waiting areas and study areas. The clinic includes a dental suite and 19 consulting rooms, many of which with adjacent separate examination rooms.
Each group of consulting rooms have their own patient waiting areas and separate receptionist which promotes the feel of numerous smaller practices within the one building. Our treatment area includes separate treatment cubicles, ECG & Spirometry, gynaecological and plaster rooms each with electric beds. The clinic has its own audiometry annexe (to ASA standards). A Pathology collection centre is based within the practice for patient convenience.
A full complement of practice nurses (3.5 full time positions), receptionists, clerical and administrative staff provide support to clinic doctors. The day to day and business management is undertaken by the practice manager, Dale Beatty.
The clinic operates a large Windows computer network including mail server and terminal server. Best Practice clinical software is the basis of our paperless medical record system while Zedmed compliments Best Practice with billing and appointments. Fast ADSL 2 broadband is available to each user within the practice. Argus secure email is promoted as our preferred electronic communication with all specialists. All incoming correspondence is scanned directly into Best Practice for each GP.
Clinic fees are set independent of the Commonwealth schedule and AMA fee levels. Pensioners are bulk billed while the financially disadvantaged receive discounted fees.
At present there are resident in the city, two paediatricians, a physician and cardiologist, general surgeons, two orthopaedic surgeons, an obstetrician/gynaecologists, three ophthalmologists. Click here for more detail on Resident Specialists .
Regular visiting specialists include two ENT surgeons, psychiatrists, rheumatologist, gastroenterologist, a respiratory physician consults fortnightly from Hawkins Clinic, cardiologists, audiologists, and visiting specialists from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Click here for more detail on Visiting Specialists.
Allied Health Services include private physiotherapy, podiatry, psychological and counselling practices. The Community Health Service also provides mental health, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, dietetic, diabetic, geriatric and district nursing support.
Clinic Hours
Consulting hours are variable and are staggered with some doctors starting their consulting early (from 8.00 am) to finish early while others start their day later and work through to 5.30 pm or later. Full time consulting is considered as 9 three hour sessions Monday to Friday plus participation in the clinic after hours roster.
After Hours
A regular evening clinic is held from 7.00 pm. Here one doctor consults (with a backup if busy). This doctor takes overnight calls from the community although many patients present direct to Accident and Emergency at the Hospital during the night. On a roster basis a clinic doctor provides an after hours clinic on Saturday and Sunday evenings from 7.00 pm to 8.00 pm and on Sunday mornings from 11.00 am to 12 noon.
Hospital staff residents now provide 24 hour accident and emergency and public inpatient services in the Mount Gambier Hospital. The G.P. obstetricians and G.P. paediatricians from within Mount Gambier have formed Joint Venture groups to contract their services to the local hospital. They administer and manage their own town roster system. Interested GPs are invited to participate in the town roster and are remunerated on a per day basis.
Secure Email Communication
Hawkins Clinic doctors prefer to correspond with specialists and allied health professionals using ARGUS secure email software.
All mail sent using this service is encrypted using the location PKI certificate that has been issued Hawkins Clinic to communicate with Medicare Australia.
Argus communication is acknowledged by the software which allows any failures to be notified to either party for follow up.
Our argus address is argusreports@hawkinsmedical.com.au |
