Dianella GP Super Clinic at Broadmeadows is marking its first anniversary this month with new, innovative services for its clients.
The clinic was opened with much fanfare last February and has now expanded, with more medical and specialist staff and longer opening hours. After-hours care is now offered seven days a week.
Chief executive Dr Neil Cowen said Dianella Community Health had spent the past year ensuring more local people had access to the clinic’s services.
“We’ve created a hub for increased numbers of top-level health professionals,” Dr Cowen said. “There’s a wider range of services available, extended hours and same-day medical bookings, which can be made by telephone or online, to offer greater flexibility in today’s busy lifestyles, especially for families.
“The range of languages spoken by our medical staff has also increased, complementing Dianella interpreter services to ensure we meet the needs of our diverse local community.”
Dr Cowen said doctors and nurses from a range of backgrounds could converse in Arabic, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Farsi, Sinhalese and Tamil.
The interpreter service is also available for people speaking Assyrian/Chaldean, Turkish, Persian (Farsi), Nepalese and Vietnamese
Clinical director Ralph Audehm said services were specifically designed to meet the needs of a diverse and vibrant community.
“We get a lot of people whose first language is not English and I find that I’m using the interpreter service more than I ever have before,” Dr Audehm said.
“We try to cater our services to the areas where there’s the most need.
“We also offer a refugee and asylum seeker service, which can get quite busy, and we see a lot of families that have been through so much so it’s important that we can offer them a quality service, and be able to communicate with them through the interpreters and our own medical staff.”
The Dianella GP Super Clinic has attracted 1375 new patients in its first year of operation, and after-hours services are also well attended Dr Cowen said.
Other services available at the super clinic include dental, MIA radiology and St John of God pathology, with allied health services including podiatry, physiotherapy, dietetics and psychology.
