Thu,Dec,2019
Frasers Livestock Transport has supported many organisations during its 75 years of serving rural Australia, and according to the family company’s Managing Director, Ross Fraser (OAM), Heart of Australia is one of the most important.
Ross first learned of Heart of Australia while listening to the Country Hour on ABC Radio.
“I heard an interview with Dr Rolf Gomes talking about his mission to deliver specialist medical services to rural and regional Australia. I quickly realised it was a wonderful initiative and something that Frasers could and should get involved in.
“Rolf mentioned he was looking for a tyre company to help out with the cost of tyres required for his customised mobile clinics. Being a transport company, we have some great relationships with tyre companies, so I gave Rolf a call and offered to help.
“We helped connect Rolf with the great team at Bridgestone, who were as eager as we were to become a part of the initiative, and came on board as Heart of Australia’s dedicated tyre partner.”
Frasers had helped Heart of Australia to secure a fantastic tyre partner, but they didn’t stop there.
“We phoned Rolf back once the tyres were sorted and asked ‘now what can Frasers Livestock Transport do?’ We quickly worked out that one of the things we had in common was drivers. We understood, perhaps more than most, the critical role that drivers play in delivering goods and services to people in rural Australia. So we committed to making a financial contribution each quarter to help towards the cost of drivers wages.
“Rolf had come up with a unique concept that would help support the people in the bush, and he had the drive and determination to make it happen. We wanted to help.
“We knew first hand that country people often wait too long to get their health issues checked. Before Heart of Australia existed, you had to travel to the city for specialist care, and that’s pretty daunting to do. People in the city don’t always appreciate how difficult it is to get to the city, but there’s a lot of hurdles you have to negotiate. You need to find someone to mind your property and your stock, and with the drought, many people can’t afford to employ someone to do it. Then there are all the costs of travel and accommodation.
“That’s why the work of Heart of Australia is so important. Bringing the doctors and all their equipment to the doorstep just makes good sense. The people living and working on the land need our help and support to stay there, and it’s incredibly reassuring for the people who live in the communities Heart of Australia visits to know the doctors and equipment are there when they need it. It’s just one of the way we can support them to stay on the land and in their communities.
Ross said Frasers could not be more pleased with their decision to support Heart of Australia.
“Our staff let us know how proud they when they see our logo on the heart trucks in the communities where our staff and customers live and work.”
“As a family company, dedicated to supporting rural communities, it is an honour to be a part of the work being done by Heart of Australia.
Frasers Livestock Transport is celebrating its 75th birthday this year – a major milestone for any company. The business was founded in 1944 by Ross’s parents: Charles and Edna Fraser. The transport empire is now owned and operated by Ross and his two brothers Les and Peter, all great supporters of Heart of Australia.
Thu,Jun,2019
Heart of Australia is thrilled to announce that we now have high quality, lung function testing available onboard all three of our Heart Trucks.
This new, enhanced service has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Niche Medical, a small, Australian-owned firm that specialises in the distribution of medical equipment, including equipment for respiratory medicine. Niche medical donated one portable, advanced lung function testing machine outright, and provided a significant discount on the other two units, allowing the service to be available on all three heart trucks.
The new piece of equipment, the EasyOne Pro, will enhance the service we can provide to our regional patients by allowing us to perform real-time, highly reliable lung function testing on the Heart Trucks. The device is portable, delivers real-time results, is highly accurate and requires no warm-up time or calibration. It also has no moving parts, which is an ideal scenario for equipment set to travel thousands of kilometres a month on outback roads.
We are thrilled to welcome Niche Medical to the Heart of Australia family of supporters.
Heart of Australia is privileged to enjoy the support of several smaller, Australian-owned companies.
For many of our small business supporters, like Niche Medical, the donation to Heart of Australia is the first time the company has made such a significant contribution to an organisation, proportionate to that organisation’s turnover. While Niche Medical has been involved in supporting other purpose-driven initiatives, including the Indigenous Respiratory Outreach Care (IROC), the donation of the advanced function lung testing machine to Heart of Australia is the largest donation the company has made in its history.
Niche Medical Director, Craig Abud, said they were excited to be able to support the Heart of Australia initiative.
“As an Australian-owned company, we are passionate about ensuring that all our fellow Australians have access to high-quality medical services. That means medical staff have access to the equipment they need. When your clinic is on the back of a truck travelling thousands of kilometres a month on uneven roads, that’s an even bigger challenge.
“Working with Dr Gomes, we realised we had a piece of equipment that could help regional patients get access to lung function testing onboard the Heart Trucks. It can be challenging when you are a small business, to balance the realities of managing the bottom-line with the desire to make a difference, but it was something we truly wanted to be a part of.”
We love that Heart of Australia is inspiring more and more Australian companies of all sizes, to get involved and make a difference as we work together to deliver the specialist services regional Australians deserve.
Thu,Jun,2019
Dr Gomes recently headed north to visit Sarina, Proserpine, Ayr, and Palm Island, each earmarked for inclusion in the forthcoming northern expansion of Heart of Australia’s mobile clinical services.
The northern expansion, made possible thanks to the funding commitment from the Federal Government, will see Heart of Australia progressively increase the number of communities we service from 16 to 25, with the new towns including Richmond, Weipa, Cooktown, Sarina, Palm Island, Biloela, Childers, Proserpine and Ayr.
Dr Gomes’ recent trip to speak with the communities was an essential step in making the expansion a reality. Dr Gomes spent his time meeting with members of the local communities, including local GPs, to discuss Heart of Australia’s expansion plans.
“Local GPs are the best-informed people when it comes to understanding the local medical needs in the communities where they live and work. Their knowledge and insights will be invaluable in helping Heart of Australia to develop plans for the new northern expansion, to ensure our plans reflect community-specific needs,” Dr Gomes said.
The trip also allowed the Heart of Australia team to identify potential sites to host the heart truck during future visits in each of the towns, where the mobile clinics will be highly visible and easy for local community members to access.
The next major step towards advancing the northern expansion will be the design and manufacture of a new mobile clinic.
“In order to service the additional northern towns without compromising the services being offered to existing communities, we need to design and build a new dedicated vehicle for the expanded northern route,” said Dr Gomes.
This new truck, HEART 4, like the three preceding heart trucks, will be designed by Dr Gomes, who is a trained engineer as well as a cardiologist. Dr Gomes will incorporate any new knowledge and local insights gained during this trip to the lessons learned from four years of delivering specialist services to rural and regional towns via mobile clinics in designing HEART 4.
Excitement is growing, with the design and build of HEART 4 set to commence next month, once the funding for the expansion becomes available. The build of the custom mobile medical clinic should take approximately 12 months to complete, allowing services to the expanded northern route to commence in mid-2020.
Wed,Jun,2019
While we are very excited about our great northern expansion project, we are equally thrilled to welcome the southwestern town of Quilpie, and the local community to our southern rotation.
Southwestern Queensland has traditionally been a heartland for Heart of Australia since the very beginning of our operations. Over the years we have grown the number of towns we visit in the region to include Dalby, Stanthorpe, Goondiwindi, St George, Charleville and Roma.
We are thrilled to add Quilpie to the HOA family of towns we visit, support and service. To date, our clinics in Quilpie have provided cardiology, cardiac sonography and endocrinology services.
We want to extend our thanks to the local GPs, the local council and the entire community for making our team feel so very welcome in your town.
If you think you (or someone you love or care about), should visit us on the heart truck in Quilpie or any of the other towns we visit, the first step is to visit your GP. Talk with them about your concerns, and where you agree it’s a good idea, get a referral to come to see our specialists. A referral is necessary because Heart of Australia provides specialist medical services including cardiology and respiratory medicine, so just like visiting any other specialist, you will need a referral from your GP to make an appointment.
Once you have a referral from your GP, please call us on (07) 3162 5310 or email [email protected]. We’ll take it from there and schedule you for a visit to one of our towns during an upcoming rotation.
Wed,Jun,2019
Heart of Australia has a bold mission: to ensure Queenslanders have access to the medical specialist services they need, where they need them. We work tirelessly on our mission by delivering specialist medical investigation and treatment clinics to regional, rural and remote area communities. After many months of quiet, behind-the-scenes planning, designing and building, Heart of Australia has moved into its new home at 109 Honour Avenue, Chelmer.
The coordination and management involved in making it happen on a day to day basis are complex, combining the challenges of running a modern specialist medical clinic, with a trucking logistics company and a touring troop of specialists you need to feed and house each day.
To pull it off successfully you need a team of people who are driven by the big picture of the mission, but who are highly skilled in their area of expertise, and who have excellent attention to detail. On any given day, our teams are speaking to manufacturers and trucking firms regarding vehicle and systems maintenance and future builds, talking with local GPs regarding referrals, liaising with the admin staff of our specialists regarding priority patients, flights to site and more, and of course, speaking with patients to book their appointments and help ease any anxiety they have about attending the truck for the first time.
As the number of towns and the number of heart trucks has grown, so have the logistical challenges. To date, we have been juggling operation management from several sites, but we have now found our (hopefully) forever home in Chelmer in a for-purpose renovated Queenslander.
Our new HQ now acts as the central control hub for all our operations. We manage all our activities, liaise with our specialists, communities and local GPs and perform all the booking coordination for patients for all our heart trucks across all our towns.
Our headquarters are co-located with Dr Gomes’ private practice – MediHearts, which is located on the ground floor. This co-location is an invaluable step forward for Heart of Australia. While Dr Gomes was sad to forego his dual location practice (Taringa and Ipswich), the dramatic reduction in travelling times means both Heart of Australia and MediHearts have greater access to his time. As we have as yet, been unable to clone him, this is the next best thing.
The building itself is beautiful and provides a calm and supportive working space for our hard-working and dedicated administration and operations team. While their work is often behind-the-scenes compared to the work of our dedicated mobile heart truck teams, their roles are just as vital in our efforts to save lives and deliver health equity to people in regional Queensland.
