News | Halekulani Medical Centre

Category: News

12/05/2022 by q0EE6LuWOi 0 Comments

Today is the International Day of Nurses

We are incredibly proud of our talented and highly skilled nurse Catherine, who goes above and beyond to deliver outstanding medical care to our patients and families, working tirelessly every day to make a difference in people’s lives. Always with a SMILE ????

Always PROFESSIONAL, always RELIABLE, always CARING, always PASSIONATE, always UNDERSTANDING, always LOVING, always SELFLESS, always COMPASSIONATE, always KIND, always FRIENDLY, always DEDICATED, always COMMITTED to the care of our patients in their most needful time.

And, did we say ALWAYS with a SMILE? ????

From our patients, from our community, and from all the team at Halekulani Medical Centre:

Thank you for YOUR very special way of NURSING, Catherine!

04/05/2022 by q0EE6LuWOi 0 Comments

A Warm Welcome Dr. Rabia Arain to Halekulani Medical Centre

Dr. Rabia Arien has joined our team from Sunny Queensland. Dr. Rabia has extensive training and special interest in gynaecology, Obstetrics and women’s health. Also, Dr. Rabia enjoys other aspects of family medicine and general practice. She works Monday to Saturday. Dr Rabia is looking forwards to building long term valued relationships with her patients.

27/09/2021 by q0EE6LuWOi 0 Comments

Telehealth appointments are in place for today and tomorrow

We are very grateful for the personal and open relationship we have with our patients and thank them for the fast communication we have had from them.

This morning we got a phone call from a patient that had just received a positive COVID test and advised us that she had been in our practice last week. This prompted our internal COVID emergency plan into action; straight away we contacted the department of health and the clinical and admin team got tested.

The receptionists tirelessly contacted all patients that had bookings and converted them to telehealth appointments. After the contact tracers investigated the patients’ movements, they informed us that the COVID+ patient was NOT infectious when she visited the practice, and probably contracted the virus in the community AFTER her doctor’s visit.

However, Halekulani Medical Centre takes the safety of our community very seriously and with an abundance of caution we have decided to temporarily hold face-to-face appointments; we will remain contactless, and the doctors will continue consulting via telehealth until all our team receives a negative test result. For the peace of mind of our patients and staff, we are also conducting a specialized deep clean to disinfect all around our practice.

We thank you all for your understanding, and we thank the community for being alert through this pandemic. We especially want to thank our amazing patient for her openness to contact us as soon as she received the positive result, even before the contact tracers got to it.

Please follow our practice website, facebook, and instagram for continuous updates on when we will be resuming face-to-face appointments or any information we may receive from the DoH. Meanwhile, if you need medical care, rest assured that the doctors and the nurses at Halekulani Medical Center will still be attending patients via phone and video link.

Take care and keep safe

29/06/2021 by q0EE6LuWOi 0 Comments

The cost of healthcare

Investing in HIGH STANDARD QUALITY CARE

At Halekulani Medical Centre, we always strive for continuous improvement to make sure we offer our patients the highest standard of quality care.

For that, we continually invest in the services that we offer our patients, invest in training our staff, and in upkeeping our premises to provide the community with the best experience while visiting the doctor.

Why can’t we bulkbill everyone? Sometimes, we are asked why we don’t bulk bill everyone?

Medicare is Australia’s public health insurance system and funds a range of services such as GP visits, blood tests, X-rays and consultations with other medical specialists. However, not every healthcare service a patient needs is included in Medicare. The Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) lists the services the Australian government will provide a Medicare rebate for. Medicare rebates do not cover the full cost of medical services and are typically paid on the patient’s behalf to the practice as a percentage of the Medicare Schedule fee.

When the doctors bulk-bill, patients often believe the doctor will receive the same amount of money for the service, just from a different source. This, unfortunately, is not the case. When a patient is bulk-billed, the doctor ONLY receives the current Medicare rebate.

As we all know, life cost increases year after year. The cost of running your household goes up: food, petrol, electricity, entertainment, housing, water, and consumables all go up in cost. Likewise, the price of running a GP practice inevitably goes up in cost, which means, your healthcare cost also increases.

However, the government has frozen the contribution to your personal Medicare health fund since 2013. That means that the amount of money that Medicare allocates for your healthcare is the same (or less in some cases) than what they used to pay 8 years ago. Effectively, patients’ rebate has been affected.

In order to continue to be viable and to offer a high standard of medical care to the community (which is what we believe all Australians deserve), the Medicare freeze has forced quality medical centres to introduce a fee to cover the gap on the costs. That is the out of pocket cost to the patient.

However, Halekulani Medical Centre will continue to absorb most healthcare costs and continue to provide the highest quality of medical care for all our patients.

At Halekulani Medical Centre, all our team is committed to providing the highest quality of medical care for all our patients.

We take this opportunity to thank you for your continuous support.

HMC team