Practice focuses on holistic approach
Te Puke’s Poutiri Trust is to open stage one of its wellness centre next Monday. Based at the trust’s Commerce Lane premises, the centre is the result of a drive to improve wha¯nau wellness through an affordable, holistic wellness hub that proactively supports wha¯nau to be well, get well and live well.
The first step is a new medical practice that will open on January 25 with doctors Joe Bourne, Tim Chiari, Jen Hall and Dan Jackson joining the team of Poutiri. The practice will operate alongside Poutiri’s mental health and addiction, nursing, wha¯nau ora, breastfeeding, employment support and child/ rangatahi services.
“Stage one is the medical practice, but it is part of a new fitout and integrated service that is happening in stages this year,” says Poutiri Trust CEO Spencer Webster.
Spencer says the trust’s board has been wanting to introduce an integrated wellness centre to the community for some time.
“So this is our starting point — this is the kick-off of a broader strategy to introduce a more holistic approach to wellness and care delivery,” he says.
“We want to implement a different and integrated model of care to our community.”
He says the trust is looking to develop the Commerce Lane building to make it fit for purpose.
The driver for providing the new service is bringing wellness to the community.
“We’re a Ma¯ori health provider so we have a particular aspiration to make an impact on Ma¯ori health inequities. We really want to see if we can’t make a transformational change to the outcomes and the states that our people are in. But it’s for the entire community, promoting wellness as a normal way of being and an attainable way of being.
“Phase one is the medical centre built on this different way of doing things. From there we can integrate other services and co-locate other services so there’s a broader offering for the community.”
Dan and Jen, two of the four GPS working at the medical centre, have been working in Ma¯ ori health for four and a half years and in Te Puke for just over two.
“So we’ve got some background there and the prospect of this is very exciting,” says Dan.
“It could take health care to a whole new level.
“We’ve seen that the traditional GP sitting in a silo model of health care is not addressing the inequities that Spencer is talking about in Ma¯ori health, so this feels like a way of tackling that problem by co-locating with other services with a more holistic feel, rather than someone prescribing some pills and that’s the end of it.”
Jen says there is more to health than physical health.
“There’s also your spiritual health, your mental health, your social heath and wellbeing, so we want to proactively engage with patients to address their whole wellbeing, them in their entirety, rather than just focusing in on one part of them.
“We’re hoping for a very integrated, multi-disciplinary approach where essentially all the health professionals in the building will be working together to increase wellbeing — whole-person wellbeing.”
Enrolments for the new centre are now being taken.