Regional Services
Hospitals:

• 35 bed public Hospital at Proserpine, with the capacity to admit private patients.
• Public and several private hospitals at Mackay, some 130kms from Proserpine, 155 from Airlie Beach.

Hospital Admissions.
All doctors in the area may apply for admitting rights to the Proserpine Hospital. If the patient chooses to be admitted as a public patient, the hospital employed doctors take over their care. If they wish to be admitted privately, then a member of the admitting practice looks after them while hospitalised. Where appropriate, they are of course referred for consultant care to either Mackay or, less commonly, Townsville.

The recently renewed Proserpine Hospital has state-of-the art facilities in every department. While there are no resident consultants in Whitsunday, there are regular sessions by visiting orthopaedic surgeons, general surgeons, gynaecologists, and psychiatrists. The full range of medical and surgical specialities is available in Mackay.

Paramedical.
Whitsunday itself is well served by para-medical facilities and providers. Some of the services available are as follows:

Pathology.
The Central Queensland Pathology centred in Mackay runs a twice-daily courier service across all of the practices in the Whitsunday region. Results are processed and returned via computer and fax to the relevant practice within 4-12 hours. The computer system enables all results to be with the referring doctor as soon as they are processed.

Health Promotion Activities.
During the past year, the practice has promoted and participated in the Heart Care programme, and lent consulting rooms for the use of the visiting Heart Care nurse to perform free cholesterol checks. Partners participate in Skin Watch Clinics and contribute a weekly, anonymous column to the local newspaper on a medical topic. They produce in-house patient handouts on a range of topics such as asthma, diet, diabetes, infant care, and so on. Each surgery is also well stocked with commercially produced educational handouts on a broad cross-section of topics. The partners are, from time to time, asked to appear as guest speakers at community functions and to collaborate with schools to present topical information for children.