THE Gunnedah Rural Health board appointed Alan Hayes, of Hayes Advisory, as voluntary administrator on Friday.
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The administrator is exploring means by which the Gunnedah Health Centre may continue.
The administrator has kept the doors open.
Gunnedah Health Centre was made possible with the majority of funding provided by the Australian government and significant contributions from the local community, as well as Shenhua and BHP Billiton.
“The vision that local doctors would practise from the state-of-the-art facility has proved difficult and did not eventuate,” Mr Hayes said in a letter to the NVI.
“Consequently, the community benefits expected to accrue failed to materialise.
“Notwithstanding this difficult, there remains an opportunity for the original vision and the accompanying community benefits to materialise.”
That is the goal of the administrator.
The recent engagement of Dr Martin Jodlowski-Tan as Gunnedah Health Centre’s chief medical officer has led to great interest and commitment from medical students and registrars.
The presence of a senior doctor at Gunnedah Health Centre is a pre-condition for the acceptance of medical students and registrars.
“The need for senior doctors was necessarily supplemented by locum doctors, an expensive option which was and remains unsustainable in the long term,” Mr Hayes said.
“Gunnedah Health Centre’s board would like to thank the local community, staff and doctors for their support including those who have volunteered many hundreds of hours to maintain the provision of services to the community.”