Remote town’s GoFundMe campaign to secure GP care

Residents of a remote West Australian town left without a GP in June are banding together to raise funds for their own community health clinic.
 
The Kalbarri Development Association (KDA) launched a GoFundMe campaign this month in a bid to help fill the void left by the shutdown of the town’s solo clinic in late June.
 
The closure, which the then-owners blamed on low Medicare indexation and MBS changes, has forced some of the community’s 1500 residents to travel hours to neighbouring towns to continue seeing a GP.
 
The KDA plans to apply for a tender to run a general practice clinic, which it expects the local Shire of Northampton to release shortly, and is seeking to raise $200,000 for initial set-up costs.
 
The funds would go towards establishing the Kalbarri Community Health Practice, which would be a not-for-profit practice providing ‘local GP services into the future’.
 
‘Your donation will help cover the costs of establishing the practice, recruiting staff, meeting accreditation requirements, and supporting the practice through its early months,’ the GoFundMe callout says.
 
‘Every donation also shows that Kalbarri believes local healthcare is important and is prepared to support it.’
 
KDA Chair Merilynn Eastland says Kalbarri, which is classified as a Modified Monash 6 remote community, has been struggling since the previous GPs left.
 
‘It’s been pretty devastating to a majority of people, particularly those that just need regular prescriptions,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘That includes a large percentage of our population – we’ve got about 40% of our population over 60 years old.’
 
She says that while some locals have found general practice care in Northampton, just over an hour away, others are having to go further afield to Geraldton, which is more than 150 kilometres away.
 
‘I’ve got a daughter [who has] been really sick … so we’ve both found a GP in Geraldton, but … that is a long distance,’ she said.
 
‘For us, we try and make it a day when we do other business in Geraldton at the same time, but that doesn’t always fit with appointments.’
 
One future consult is booked at 9.00 am, which Mrs Eastland says will mean leaving Kalbarri when kangaroo activity is at its peak. She also estimates round-trip fuel costs at about $70.
 
‘It takes you four hours’ travel without your time at the doctor, so you’re basically losing a day of work if you’re a worker,’ she said.
 
‘If you’re a parent, you’ve got to either try and fit it in between the school hours if you don’t want to take your kids with you … so it’s really been a big problem.’
 
Fellow local resident, Bek Toomey, also told newsGP about the impact, which was brought home after she took her 17-year-old son to Geraldton for an ultrasound following a football injury.
 
Without a nearby GP, the results were directed instead to the Kalbarri Health Centre, which is set up for emergency care.
 
‘Waiting four-and-a-half hours in emergency, watching lots of people that really need doctors, we kind of felt like we shouldn’t be there,’ Mrs Toomey said.
 
‘With the doctor’s surgery closing, it didn’t really occur to me how much it would affect us.’
 
She is now strongly backing the KDA’s campaign.
 
‘I feel like the community needs to do it,’ Mrs Toomey said. ‘No one’s coming to our rescue.’
 
Mrs Eastland says the push for a non-profit community clinic began from discussions she had with the KDA, drawing on members’ significant healthcare backgrounds.
 
A nurse for 13 years at a small clinic in Mount Magnet, a mining town ‘in the middle of nowhere’, Mrs Eastland also previously managed the Kalbarri hospital until her retirement seven years ago.
 
She and her KDA colleagues have been throwing themselves into research, gleaning advice from community not-for-profit healthcare organisations as far away as Mareeba in Queensland, as well as other health professionals locally.
 
‘We need enough to operate the business for the first 12 months, including staff salary,’ she said.
 
Funds raised stood a little under $7000 on 18 August, but she is optimistic about the project’s potential for success.
 
She is also keen for the local council, which she says has not previously provided direct funds for general practice care, to avoid having to pay more to sustain a private clinic, which she worries will push rates up.
 
Initially the community clinic could start with a salaried GP and nurse practitioner, Mrs Eastland hopes, eventually expanding and attracting visiting specialists to cover demand for dermatology, women’s health, diabetes and mental health treatment.
 
‘We’ve done our homework,’ she said.
 
‘And we believe that, at the end of 12 months, we can be self-sufficient. We want to be able to do it and to do it without the community having to fork out.
 
‘We wouldn’t be pushing this if we weren’t enthusiastic and didn’t think it would work.’
 
Log in below to join the conversation.

Kalbarri remote healthcare rural general practice Western Australia