National award for medical centre
Wednesday June 10, 2009
Cobar Shire Council’s special projects officer Angela Shepherd, Cobar Primary Health Care Centre manager Bernice Martin and council general manager Ray Smith discuss the submission for the National Award for Local Government, after the medical centre was named a category winner in the awards program.
The efforts of the many parties who have helped make the Cobar Primary Health Care Centre a successful venture have been recognised with a national award.
Cobar Shire Council has been named as the Small Council winner of the Health and Wellbeing category in the National Awards for Local Government for 2009.
The award follows a submission from council detailing the development of
the medical centre from having no doctors to the successful multi-service facility it is
today.
Council has now been given the opportunity to go onto judging for an overall award from all the category winners, with special projects officer Angela Shepherd travelling to Canberra earlier this week to make a presentation about the facility.
The original submission said the building was designed to be a “walk-in, walk-out” facility to attract doctors, but faced many obstacles after it was first opened in 2006.
“Over subsequent months the three doctors in town refused to co-locate and by 2008 all had left town and Cobar was without the services of a full time doctor.
“When council was unable to find a solution to running the medical centre, a community committee was established.
“This committee looked into a number
of options and eventually a proposal was
put to the Outback Division of General
Practice who agreed to take over the management of the centre,” the submission said.
Cobar Primary Health Care Centre manager Bernice Martin said the award is “good recognition” of how far the facility has come since it opened.
“We’ve got something great here and if you look at all the services that are there now compared with 12 months ago, it is a major improvement,” Mrs Martin said.
Council’s general manager Ray Smith said the award is “significant” for council.
“It relates right back to council’s initiative to spend money to build the centre in the first place.
“The award is not just based on the past 12 months.
“It goes right back to the original concept to build the centre,” Mr Smith said.
“Even though we went through some rough spots, we now have a best practice model that is being looked at for use by other councils right across the country.”
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