Alexandra's new care centre is filling a need in the community, giving residents and visitors medical security.
The building, on the corner of Tarbert and Fox Sts, also houses the practice’s urgent care centre, which is open seven days a week, 8am-6pm, for all Central Otago residents and visitors.
HealthCentral general manager Jenaya Smith said the new care centre was many years in the making.
The practice began operating out of its new building on July 8.
Last weekend — its first in operation — the urgent care clinic had more than 50 patients through its doors.
"It worked really well — patients just walking in, presenting, being seen in a timely manner," Ms Smith said.
Having an urgent care service in the area provided security for locals and removed uncertainty for visitors.
It was common for people to ask on social media where they could access medical care in the area at the weekend.
"Having this available, open seven days a week, just removes all of this confusion."
All patients were welcome, regardless of whether they were enrolled with the practice or not.
"We have our urgent care centre downstairs and we have our planned care, or booked appointments, upstairs.
"The team are really enjoying being in this building.
"We’re excited to see it grow and flourish."
It was an asset and showed the practice was invested in the community.
In recent months, HealthCentral had success with recruitment across the practice, including physiotherapists, nurse prescribers and GPs, Ms Smith said.
"Typically in rural areas, recruiting is one of our biggest challenges so it has been very pleasing to be more easily able to secure additional members of our team."
She put the rise in recruitment down to the new building and the urgent care centre.
The practice had attracted new private specialists who would use the space to run clinics.
"This is great news for our region as it means people residing in Central Otago do not have to travel long distances to, say, Dunedin to access these services."
Clinical director and GP Kate Dixon said the urgent care team hit the ground running and had established a good workflow.
"We had 200 patients through in the first week."
Previously, the weekend clinic had been held twice a day for two-hour blocks, which often led to congestion.
By being open all day, the new facility was not at risk of that, Dr Nixon said.
"Patients have been presenting throughout the whole time so we’ve missed having those peaks of lots of people waiting all at once, which is what we aimed to do.
"We’re just really hoping that by providing one point of [urgent] care ... we’ll be able to run our day-to-day general practice with more continuity and less disruption."
In the future, she hoped HealthCentral would be able to offer more services to patients, such as radiology.
She acknowledged nothing in the health sector moved quickly, and the clinic would need support from Health New Zealand to fund a new radiology location and machine.
