Kia ora

Wishing you and your family and whānau a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Please note our opening times over the festive season.

Closed 23 – 26 December
Open 8:30am – 5pm, 27 – 29 December
Closed 30 December – 2 January
Open 8:30am – 5pm, 3 – 5 January

Repeat Prescriptions: Order your repeat prescriptions now for the holidays.

After Hours Service

ALWAYS CALL 111 FOR EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE

The After-Hours Service at Waiheke Medical Centre will be available on the public holidays and weekends. They can be reached on 09 372 3111.

In addition, we will be sending an email to patients next week explaining how you can access telehealth services over the holiday period.

These services allow you to get care from the comfort of your home and have the added benefit of keeping the island’s limited medical services freed up for emergencies during the busy summer season.

Thank you, Waiheke Tennis Club!

Each year the Waiheke Tennis Club hosts Le Tour de Tennis, a one-day tournament that lets locals and visitors play at some of the island’s privately owned tennis courts. The players have a wonderful time, but it is the Waiheke Health Trust that is the biggest winner as all proceeds from the event come straight to us!

Funds are raised through the always sold-out registration fees and through a live auction featuring prizes from generous Waiheke sponsors. The beautiful prizes and great efforts of auctioneer Eric Pilling meant that this year the event raised $17,000 for the Health Trust – an incredible result.

In the past, we have put the proceeds from the tournament towards electric vehicles for our team, but this year we have decided to purchase an AWD vehicle to help our District Nurses and Occupational Therapists tackle some of the island’s more challenging roads and driveways.

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to the organizing committee of Eric and Fiona Pilling, Sarah and John Hazell, and Monika May, as well as to all the players.

We are especially grateful for the consistency of the Tennis Club’s support as their efforts have enabled us to build up a dependable fleet for our community health service delivery. Thank you Waiheke Tennis Club!

We are Recruiting

Do you or a nurse who you know want to join our busy clinic and warm, professional team at the heart of the Waiheke community? We’re seeking a Practice Nurse and can be flexible about schedules to ensure a positive work/life balance for you and your whānau.

If you would like to know more, please email [email protected] or call Jen on 372 8893.

Raising Funds for Ultrasound

Currently when members of our island community need an ultrasound for pregnancy, injury or diagnosis, they have to travel to Auckland. This results in up to a full day away from work and whānau, significant travel costs, and a lengthy and challenging transport situation for those with injuries or in late stages of pregnancy.

The cost to travel to the city, a day off work and the cost of the ultrasound itself means patients are sometimes choosing between healthcare appointments and other necessities.

In August, Waiheke Health Trust hosted a gathering for island health care providers and polled them as to their most pressing needs and wants for the island. Ultrasound was the most requested piece of capital expenditure put forward. The Trust then put the same question to the community via social media.

Again, ultrasound was identified as the service that the island was in most immediate need of.

Based on this, the Health Trust decided to set up an ultrasound service which we are committed to establishing from 1 March. We have hired an experienced and empathetic sonographer, Samantha Buchanan, who is moving to Waiheke with her young family from Palmerston North in January.

We are highly dependent upon our community for capital expenditures and need to raise $185,000 to purchase the equipment and fit out the treatment room.

We’re incredibly lucky to have already received starting donations of $55,000 and are now going out to our island community to source the remaining $130,000 needed.

Because on-island ultrasound will save our community members a ferry trip into town as well as a full day of lost productivity away from work and family, we will be asking our fellow islanders to make a one-off donation.

You can either donate the cost of a ferry ticket (perhaps one of those new reserved ones) or the average daily salary of someone in NZ.

You can make a tax-deductible donation here: https://wht.org.nz/support-us/donate/ultrasound-donation/

Donate

Working Together for a Healthy Waiheke

Ostend Medical Centre was the beneficiary of some wonderful community support recently. First, we applied to the Waiheke Local Board to support the purchase of a new vaccine fridge for the medical centre and got the good news that the funding was granted. We then asked the Waiheke RSA for funding to purchase a wireless monitoring service for the vaccines for the next three years and this was also approved.

We felt like this was a great example of the community support that is present on Waiheke and are so grateful to both the Local Board and the RSA for supporting us so generously!

And in another example of island social services working together, the photo below shows our Social Worker and Health Improvement Practitioner Rozanne Gold dropping off Christmas goodies from the Ostend Medical Centre and Waiheke Health Trust team to the Waiheke Budgeting Services Trust. Our staff was delighted to help fill up the Waiheke Food Bank and we would like to wish all of our patients, clients and community members a safe and happy Christmas season!