AN Ararat resident has vented her frustration at the lack of appointments at the local Tristar Medical Clinic.<\/p>\n
Maree Murphy recently transferred her medical records from the Ararat Medical Centre to the Tristar clinic, but has now found making an appointment is near impossible.<\/p>\n
Tristar currently has a doctor available at the clinic just eight hours a week.<\/p>\n
Ms Murphy said getting a face to face appointment at Tristar has become very difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is frustrating, yes, especially if you have an issue where you really need to see them straight away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTelehealth appointments are ok, but sometimes you need that face to face contact, you need someone who is understanding of all of the symptoms. Face to face, you get that time to talk to a doctor, telehealth doesn\u2019t always do that, you can\u2019t always hear properly, sometimes reception isn\u2019t so good if you are on a mobile phone so I find it much more difficult. With telehealth, you also feel like you are in a hurry,\u201d Ms Murphy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless I go back to Ararat Medical Centre, I just have to wait for an appointment. It\u2019s frustrating,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Advocate contacted Tristar this week to be told the company is working tirelessly to attract new doctors to the country.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said it was incredibly hard to recruit appropriately trained doctors to country areas, but the company was doing its \u201cabsolute utmost to recruit new rural doctors\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a similar situation at Tristar\u2019s Avoca clinic, which only has face to face appointments half a day a week.<\/p>\n
The company spokesperson said patients are being offered telehealth appointments as a short term measure until new doctors are employed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing our very best to fill the vacancies but recruiting doctors to the country isn\u2019t as easy as people might think,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AN Ararat resident has vented her frustration at the lack of appointments at the local Tristar Medical Clinic. Maree Murphy recently transferred her medical records from the Ararat Medical Centre to the Tristar clinic, but has now found making an appointment is near impossible. Tristar currently has a doctor available at the clinic just eight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-5A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}