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RDN joins New England Outreach stakeholders in Tamworth
8th July 2024
In recent weeks, the RDN Outreach team has been continuing its annual round of regional stakeholder meetings across NSW. The federally funded Outreach program works to increase access to healthcare services for rural, remote and Aboriginal communities and has proved highly successful.
“The RDN Outreach Program hosts regional meetings of all Outreach local partner organisations and stakeholders as part of the yearly service review and planning process,” explains RDN’s Health Access Programs Senior Co-ordinator Trent Wrightson.
“These meetings bring key stakeholders from the local community together and provides an open forum to review the Outreach program service plan for the new year ahead, discuss referral pathways, common challenges in the sector and share successful models and approaches.”
On Wednesday, RDN hosted the New England regional meeting at Tamworth Aboriginal Medical Service (TAMS), bringing together representatives from TAMS, Armajun Aboriginal Health Service, Walhallow Aboriginal Corporation, Pius Aboriginal Corporation, Hunter New England LHD, Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN, the Brien Holden Foundation, HealthWISE and the AH&MRC.
TAMS CEO Damion Brown welcomed the group to TAMS, on Gomeroi country. “Our colleagues at RDN have taken on five key points to take back, some of that is the gaps that we’re struggling with”, Damion later told RDN.
“Also, we discussed promoting some good news stories, largely around the ENT service, which a couple years ago was a struggle and people were struggling to get in and get operations. RDN, ourselves and the LHD and a few other people have done a lot of work to build that ENT service and I give thanks to the clinicians and certainly my clinicians and all the other clinicians that do that work to provide that ENT service.”
CEO of Armajun AMS Debbie McCowan also enjoyed the opportunity of talking about workforce issues with regional stakeholders and hearing about RDN Outreach programs operating in the region.
Debbie told RDN that she believes the Outreach model is a “brilliant’ one:
“There’s a lot of other services and a lot of other sources of funding where we don’t have a say in what we want and where we want and how we want it. We have that with RDN,” she says. “The funding we receive is really essential funding because it provides all our allied health services and it provides our specialist services.”
RDN’s Outreach Program Manager Amanda Masset, together with Trent Wrightson presented on the Outreach programs currently running in the region, including:
- Rural Health Outreach Fund (RHOF)
- Medical Outreach Indigenous Chronic Disease Program (MOICDP)
- Visiting Optometrists Scheme (VOS)
- Ear and Eye Surgical Support Services (EESS)
- Healthy Ears, Better Hearing, Better Listening (HEBHBL)
- Aboriginal Eye Health Coordination (AEHC) Program
- Western NSW Eye Health Partnership (WEHP)
The annual regional stakeholder meetings will continue in coming weeks, and feedback on programs and workforce support needs will inform upcoming planning.
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