Community & Business
27 September, 2023
Finally - Medical Centre taking new patients
After a protracted search for new doctors, the Clifton Medical Centre has had success and is now in a position to accept new patients.

The Centre is open five days a week covering video and face to face consultations.
The telehealth system through video complements the personal consultations at the Centre.
Practice nurse Simone Jackson said the video consultations are working really well.
“The community has embraced it,” she said.
The consultation with GPs via video is good for simple appointments such as referrals, prescriptions, or in preventing the spread of infectious illnesses.
Long serving Clifton GP Dr Franco said the Medical Centre is “very very happy” with the return to service for the community.
“It was a bit touch and go for a year or so,” he said.
“Wannapa (Executive Director) and Simone (Practice Nurse) have done a marvellous job in recruiting new people for the medical centre.”
Dr Franco said the combination of personal visits and the video consultations appears to be working really well.
He said a personal visit enables the doctor to get to know the patients first, then it’s easier to follow up with video appointments.
Dr Franco’s specialty area is skin cancer but he said that can’t be done through the video cart.
Dr Franco works on site at Clifton one day a week and mostly deals with skin cancer.
He said there’s been a real shift to video health in the last couple of months.
Dr Franco said the relationship between doctor and patient seems to be “crossing the barrier”.
He said the more the patient meets their GP through telehealth the more used to it they become and they tend to forget that the video aspect is there.
One of the new GPs at Clifton is Dr Jagdeep who does both personal and video work.
Dr Jagdeep was in private practice at Redland Bay and is currently doing a roughly 50-50 split between Clifton and Redland Bay.
The GP has a diploma in Children’s Health.
He said he is learning more about skin cancer and the associated procedures.
Dr Jagdeep said he did one week at Clifton in January and found it to be a lovely community.
He said he was impressed with the good staff and a good clinic.
At present Dr Jagdeep will be working two or three days a week in person and expects to gradually increase that.
Clifton Community Health Services (CCHS) Executive Director, Operations, Wannapa Foytong said the organisation has a strong commitment to primary health which is inclusive, equitable and cost effective through an efficient approach.
“I am overly excited and grateful to the Clifton Medical Practice team for their hard work,” Ms Foytong said.
“After so many months and a long wait we are able to get new doctors, which we thought would never happen.
“With perseverance and patience, we are where we are.”
Ms Foytong said CCHS is working on onboarding a couple more GPs and possibly a specialist.
“We also have a new psychologist, Sally Fuller, who also sees residential patients and supports staff,” she said.
“We are working on building a multi-disciplinary approach in delivering primary health care including allied health professionals.”
During discussions with The Clifton Courier Ms Foytong also gave a hint that more could be happening for CCHS with some form of expansion being pursued.
While there is a much improved level of service now available at the Medical Centre, one of the doctors is due to leave soon.
Well respected Dr Santiago Monsalve is scheduled to depart Clifton in early October.
Dr Santiago is moving interstate for family reasons.