Moyne Health Services has been in operation for more that 160 years providing the community healthcare needs in Port Fairy and surrounding districts in the Moyne Shire.
Employing more than 190 people, Moyne Health Services operates a 15 bed acute hospital, 52 place hostel, 30 place nursing home, Accident & Emergency, primary and community care services, adult day centre and allied health services.
The CEO of Moyne Health Services (MHS), Jackie Kelly, was recently a guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Port Fairy. She spoke of the services offered by MHS and the plans for future development of the Service.
Jackie is a New Zealander from Nelson and started work as a nurse before working with people with disabilities. She then spent 12 years in Melbourne working with vulnerable people before become CEO of Heywood Rural Health three years ago. Late last year she became the CEO of Moyne Health Service.
She commented that the new Urgent Care Unit was now under construction and that further modernisations would soon occur including the merger of Belfast House and Moyneyana into one aged care facility.
The State Government has allocated $2.1 million for the completion of the Community Health Building. This will allow for a bigger Gym and more space for other services (physio and podiatry for example). Work is also being done to improve services in Koroit.
.JPG)
MHS is consumer driven and strives to provide what people need and want. They are always keen to have feedback regarding what the community thinks is done well and what areas need improvement.
There are about 1000 presentations to MHS annually for urgent care. About 51% of these are from Port Fairy and 69% come from Moyne Shire.
The Service does not provide critical care however the new Urgent Care Unit will provide 24/7 coverage and will be supported by Southwest Healthcare. The Unit will consolidate units and staff in the hospital and it is expected that stage one will be completed in October 2018. Finance for the new Unit is about $250,000 short at present and a fundraising campaign led by Eda Ritchie will commence in May.
Jackie commented that a lot of time and money is spent on satisfying government regulation and providing data.
She is enjoying her role as CEO and her engagement with the community and she is hopeful that Rotary will continue to support MHS in the future.