Mackay Division
of General
Practice Ltd
ABN: 21 062 930 385

43 Evans Avenue
North Mackay
Queensland
4740
Australia



Telephone
(07) 4953 4491

Facsimile
(07) 4953 4681

International Telephone
617 4953 4491

© 2008
Mackay Division
of General Practice

Privacy Statement

MATER AFTER HOURS SERVICE

Click here if you are you a GP looking to swap a shift at the after hours service.

The Mater Private After Hours Service is a GP cooperative after hours service, owned by local doctors, which rents rooms from the Mater Private Hospital, and is supported and staffed by 90% of Mackay’ s General Practices. The service, run by the Mackay Private After Hours Services Inc., was established in 1998 and is currently one of the few, 24-hour GP after hours models operating in Australia. The fee for a GP after hours service is paid for by the patient, and after deducting the Medicare rebate patients should expect to be out-of-pocket by between $40 and $50 for a standard consultation (other costs may apply).

The service is available for patients between the hours of 5.30pm to 8.00am Monday to Friday and 24 hours a day on weekends and public holidays. Patients requiring hospital care can be admitted to the Mater Hospital or transferred to the Base Hospital by ambulance. Peak demand from the general public tends to be between 7 pm - 10 pm Monday to Friday, and from 2 pm -10 pm Saturday, and 11 am - 8 pm Sunday. Doctors are provided with a room in which they can sleep overnight during periods when they are not consulting with patients. Nursing staff provided by the Mater Hospital support the consulting GP, and provide a range of direct nursing care as part of the primary health care services delivered to patients.

All doctors working at the After Hours Service are able to admit and treat patients in the hospital. All doctors must be accredited with the hospital in order to admit patients to the Mater Private Hospital. One GP is rostered on per shift at the After Hours Service, with a 2nd on-call GP and a 3rd on-call GP (who is also on stand-by).

The After Hours Service uses Medical Director software, which the GPs use for recording and documenting what was covered in a consultation. This information, which summarises the GP after hours consultation, is then faxed to the patients regular GP.

To cater to the community’s needs the service operates every day of the year and sees approximately 12, 400 patients per year. Local GPs are rostered for the 478 sessions each year, and see an average of 26 patients per session. Though most night sessions see approximately 15 patients and the day sessions see about 35 - 45 patients.

About the Dinna-Bingera Indu Woonomoo Project

Indigenous Access to After Hours Primary Medical Care is an initiative of the Department of Health and Ageing to bring equity to Indigenous people to the private medical sector. The Indigenous people in the Mackay region have not been accessing private after hours medical services previously, as they generally do not have private health cover. The Mackay Division of General Practice recognised this as a gap in services and applied for the available grant for After Hours Primary Medical Care to service the Indigenous population.

A model was developed in collaboration with the Mackay Indigenous community members and organisations; the Mater After Hours Steering Committee; the Mackay Division of General Practice and a Critical Reference Group made up of Indigenous and medical professionals and community members.

This model was implemented on 1 November 2006 at the Mater After Hours. It was given a local name by the Yuibera Traditional Owners – Dinna-Bingera Indu Woonomoo, meaning ‘Tired You Sleep’ depicting after hours, giving more familiarity of Indigenous ownership to the project.

The rate of Indigenous mortality and morbidity is still 20 years lower than that of the wider community. Dinna-Bingera is a free service to Indigenous clients and their partners to decrease medical expenses to the family budget and increase the health of the Indigenous community.

In the first 6 months of opening, the service has had in excess of 500 Indigenous clients pass through its doors.

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DINNA-BINGERA INDU WOONOMOO

The Mater After Hours Medical Service is now available to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

It is a free after-hours medical service located at the Mater Hospital, Willetts Road, North Mackay.

Patients are treated quickly and free-of-charge by a local GP.

The service is open from 5.30pm to 8.00am, Monday to Friday and 24 hours on the weekends and public holidays.

The direct contact phone number for this service is 4965 5444.

Community Contact

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service >> email 

For more information about the Dinna-Bingera project, contact the Mackay division of General Practice 

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