What is Urgent Care?
This is a new area of
medicine that originated in the United States due to the failure of Emergency Departments
to provide timely and easy accessible care to the sick and injured. Mostly run by Emergency Physicians they
are basically walk in emergency centres for GP’s to refer to or patients to
elect to attend for episodic care.
They do not do appointments, routine care or chronic illness etc. They have the ability to handle major
emergencies if necessary with Resus capable facilities but are not
predominantly ambulance focused.
They are aimed at the 75% of patients who attend emergency centres
but do not require to be admitted. These patients normally have the longest
waiting time while the doctors are looking after sick stretcher patients so
they become dissatisfied with the wait or the cost. Our centre will aim at an “in and
out in an hour” philosophy where
waiting times will be almost nil with on site path lab and XR to get things
sorted quickly so they can go back home. We can take some ambulances but you need to have the
view that we will be able to discharge them and not require urgent admission. Things such as fracture and
dislocations, asthma, severe migraine, chest infections, can all be treated.
As with the policy we had at Wakefield Emergency Centre all patients will
have letters, emails or faxes back to their GP’s and return to them for after
care. There will be a close relationship and we will discuss patients per phone
regarding any complex arrangements.
The Centre will be fully equipped to
Emergency Centre standards and have multiple consulting and treatment areas.
Ekera Medical Pty Ltd is the
parent company and is in the process of opening two centres in Melbourne. Adelaide will be number three. Local Director will be Dr. Nyk
Wolianskyj who with Dr. Phil Kay, Emergency Specialist, commissioned Wakefield Emergency Centre in 1996 and managed
it until sold to LCM in September 2011.
Both Nyk and Phil are Directors of this new site. We still own our patient data base and
medical records so all is still there. This site will be faster and cheaper than
using public or private ED’s for those patients that suit. Referrals can be by phone, fax,
email or letter as with WEC.
We will treat and investigate the patient and then get back to you re
options for further care. An “ehealth” hub has been formed for your access and
continuity of your patients. We will be doing little or no after care and will
have good access to Specialists if need be. For patients who may need
admissions which can be up to 10% we will arrange all this.
For further information please contact Dr Nyk Wolianskyj 0427447121 or Dr Phil Kay 0418758509
There are some website to also consider
