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Cornerstone Quality Accreditation

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Our latest Cornerstone certificate arrived last week which was nice after all the work put in to complete our reaccreditation cycle. Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners is the basic qualification required for a doctor to practice without requiring oversight. Beyond that are numerous post-graduate diplomas, masters degrees and even doctorates in General Practice that reflect higher level study and skills. None of these qualifications reflect the quality of the practice that the doctor works in which what Cornerstone addresses by externally assessing to ensure policies and procedures are in place to ensure a qualified doctor is practicing in a quality environment.

This link to the list of accredited practices currently shows that Tarawera Medical Centre and two Opotiki practices are the only in the Eastern Bay of Plenty that have currently successfully completed this comprehensive quality assessment. Well done to all our staff who again put in all the hard work to achieve this.

Some of the Tarawera team when our Cornerstone certificate arrived

Some of the Tarawera team when our Cornerstone certificate arrived

Drop-in clinic hours extended

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The drop-in clinics we have been running over the past few months have been very convenient and with the winter season we are extending the morning clinic to 11:30 so that from 8:00 to 11:30 patients can just drop in without needing to phone for an appointment. This service operates again on a Friday afternoon from 4:30 to 5:30 for those that need to be seen before the weekend. Because we have 3 to 4 doctors on duty every morning we still have booked appointments for those that like to book a specific appointment time and don’t want to wait in the first come first served drop-in queue for a non-urgent problem.

A few photos of our extensions and refurbishments

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Thanks to everyone for their patience while the building work has been completed. The new rooms have been up and running this past week and were well worth the wait. The new nurses room/treatment room increases our treatment room areas to three and is a very spacious. Dr. Aidan Williams has personalised his room with a series of canvas prints from his travels – find out more of his travel and practice experiences around the world when your next drop in to see him.

Nurses room

Nurses room

Dr. Aidan Williams

Dr. Aidan Williams

Dr. Aidan Williams

 

Practice visits

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Last week we had a couple of visitors to the practice. First was the Practice Manager from Riverslea Medical Centre in Edgecumbe. They are preparing for their first Cornerstone assessment and as Tarawera Medical Centre was the first Eastern Bay practice to achieve Cornerstone and has subsequently completed 2 reaccreditation cycles we are well placed to assist and happy to help. Cornerstone is an accreditation programme specifically designed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and is a combined quality improvement and quality assurance process.

Our second visitor was Jay Preston who runs the chiropractic clinic from the Tarawera Pharmacy at the Tarawera Medical Complex. It was great to catch up with him and hear that things are taking off well with a lot of people appreciating being able to access chiropractic locally instead of having to travel out of town. He is ACC accredited and he offers a discount for seniors. He made the point that he practices a traditional form of chiropractic focussing on bone and joint alignment and feels that soft tissue therapy is more appropriately dealt with by a physio. He has an interesting accent for a Kiwi – pop in and say hello. See his website for more information.

Update on extensions and renovations

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After some frustrating delays all the renovation building and painting has been completed and we spent a couple of hours after work today setting up the new rooms and installing computers so all should be go during next week. It will be great to have the new spacious nurses/treatment room available as it will provide a third treatment room space. Our new carpets were due to go in this weekend but have been delayed by a manufacturing error in the batch delivered for the installation – a little more patience and it will be done. Heaps of great feedback from patients, so thanks to everyone for their patience and extra efforts to achieve everything needed including having our Cornerstone re-accreditation visit during the building process!