It’s been a fast and full-on start to the first New Year of Heart of Australia operations with solid referrals of first-of-2015 clients, as we’ve restarted our regular road rig clinic visits across the Southwest.

Thanks to you all for your interest and support since our pioneering service to deliver specialist medical services to rural and remote communities was launched a mere three-plus months ago.

What’s emerged clearly from our Surat Basin and Southwest travelling circuits is that your communities want – and need – just what “The Big Heart Truck” is bringing to you where you live and work.

First and foremost, our mobile clinics are slashing the time away from home, work and family for remote area patients by ending the need for your GPs to refer you to a distant major medical centre.

And … you don’t need us to tell you that there are associated costs to patients and their families – not only in fuel and possibly accommodation – of having to leave home for primary health evaluation and/or treatment.

These few months have been, for the Heart of Australia team, our steepest learning curve – lightened and highlighted by your welcome and your support.

Plus … we’ve had so many professionally challenging and personally humbling  experiences of actually saving lives, by identifying some patients presenting at our truck with heart problems that had reached severe and/or critical stages.

For us, that’s what Heart of Australia is, quite simply, all about.

May we leave you, for now, with this unsolicited comment from a patient on one of our circuits: “This Big Heart Truck is the best thing that has happened for us out here in a lifetime”.

Best wishes to you all,

Dr Rolf Gomes,

Principal,

Heart of Australia.

cardiology health heart mobile cardiac clinic rural rural health