New doctor’s surgery for Taupō
Harry and Louise Faulls prepare to open their new clinic. Photo: Dan Hutchinson
Harry and Louise Faulls prepare to open their new clinic. Photo: Dan Hutchinson
A husband and wife team is about to open the doors to a new medical centre in Taupō.
By Dan Hutchinson
Dr Harry Faulls and Nurse Practitioner Louise Faulls will open Great Lake Medical Centre at Kokomea Village next week with a focus on walk in registrations, processing enrolments and administrative setup.
Louise was brought up in Taupō, trained and worked in Auckland and most recently has been practising in Tūrangi, until a few months ago when she stopped to focus on setting up the new clinic. Harry finished up his job in Mt Maunganui on Friday last week.
Taupō has a well documented shortage of doctors and the Faulls are promising to help fill the gap and also offer some new innovations.
The two practitioners are joined by three nurses and a small team of administrative staff, with room to expand as patient numbers grow.
“We're here to serve this community ... There’re quite a few patients that are without … being enrolled anywhere at the moment, which is sad for the town,” Louise says.
Harry says a big part of their philosophy is improving access with some after hours and weekend opening times at no extra charge.
“For a busy working family, it is hard to take a day off work or take the kids out of school to see the doctor, whereas we are offering extended hours, late nights, alternate weekends.”
He says they have already been contacted by people moving into Taupō from Napier, Wellington and other places.
“We've put the website out and yeah, we've just had pre-registrations flowing in from all over the place, really,” Louise says.
Harry says the other thing they are doing is getting specialists in from other places to do clinics so that people don’t have to travel out of town. Those specialists could have patients referred to them by any of the doctors in Taupō.
“At the moment you've got to travel to Rotorua a lot of the time or Waikato … so we've already got a few lined up.”
Louise says it will be good for them to have specialists coming in regularly because they can also learn from their skills in certain areas.
The hours of the new clinic will be 8.30am - 3pm on Monday and Tuesday, 8.30am-8pm on Wednesday and Thursday, 8.30am-5pm on Friday and every second weekend, 9am-5pm on Saturday and 9am-3pm on Sunday.
“And that can be routine booked appointments for our patients. You know, just that can be a blood pressure check or, you know, a diabetes consult. It doesn't have to be a super urgent care thing.”
Because of their distance to the centre of town, they will be doing their own phlebotomy, like blood tests and other samples and have arranged with Pathlab Taupō for regular pick-ups.