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Prognosis good for Tristar group

Posted on August 26, 2011

By BEN PISCIONERI

MAYORS from both sides of the Murray River, medical professionals and politicians were on hand for the official opening of Tristar Medical Group’s new Ontario clinic yesterday.

SHAKE ON IT: Tristar Medical Group managing director, Dr Khaled El-Sheikh and Victorian Minister for Health, David Davis, mark the official opening of Tristar’s new Ontario Avenue medical clinic yesterday.

Tristar has provided a massive boost to GP numbers since establishing itself in the district several years ago and this week officially ushered in its next phase.

Its new clinic, on the corner of Thirteenth Street and Ontario Avenue, which also houses Indulge Apartments, is currently home to six doctors and attracted a packed house for its official launch yesterday.

Victorian Health Minister David Davis used his address at this week’s launch to highlight the importance of country GPs.

“General practitioners are the absolute linchpin of early diagnosis and their long and ongoing relationships with families and individual patients is a critical part of good quality medical care,” Mr Davis said yesterday.

The health minister also used his address yesterday to reiterate the Government’s $5million commitment to redevelop the Mildura Base Hospital.

“There’s additional money coming through the Commonwealth/State arrangement that will provide more money for the redevelopment of the Mildura Base Hospital,” he said yesterday.

Tristar managing director, Dr Khaled El-Sheikh, also used this week’s official opening to reveal some of the new state-of-the-art services his practices will begin offering, including ‘telehealth’.

Dr El-Sheikh said successful trials of the ‘telehealth’ system were conducted this week allowing a medical specialist, based anywhere in the country, to consult with a patient and the patient’s GP or nurse via a telelink.

He said Tristar had also developed a central records system for its patients, meaning Mildura patients’ records would be quickly accessible at any of Tristar’s 29 clinics.

While in Mildura yesterday Mr Davis officially opened the first of four Ambulance Victoria MICA Single Responder Units to be established in country Victoria.

Single responder units are vehicles designed to get MICA paramedics to incidents as quickly as possible to perform life-saving care, rather than as patient transports.

Mr Davis’s opening of the Mildura unit came just over 24 hours after he announced the sacking of the existing Ambulance Victoria board, which has been in place since the former Labor Government merged the rural and metropolitan ambulance services in 2008.

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