Wellness Clinics

Outpatient Clinics, Wellness Clinics and Episodic Care

Outpatient Clinic

The medical team at Te Rangimarie Hospice are able to review patients and their carers in the outpatient clinic.  The patient’s general practitioner (GP) is the main medical professional involved in care in the community.  Sometimes, the medical team at the hospice will support the GP by seeing a patient and carers to review how things are going.  The hospice doctor will always communicate with the GP following seeing the patient.

 

Wellness Clinic patients

Sometimes a patients health can improve and they no longer need to be visited at home by the palliative care community nurse.  They will become recipients of the ‘Wellness Clinic’, a nurse-led clinic whereby weekly/fortnightly or monthly contact can to made to monitor how the patient is doing.

 

After a period of time, it may become evident that the patient being reviewed by the Wellness clinic nurse, has had a change and their condition has stablised and they are no longer needing regularly contact from the nurse.  In this situation, the patient can be listed under the ‘Episodic care’ category.  This means that the no contact is made with the patient unless they ring in for assistance.  After a period of a few months, the patient’s condition may be so stable that an assessment is made that the patient no longer has specialist palliative care needs.  In this situation, it would be discussed with the patient and carer, palliative care team and the GP will be advised that the patient is safe for discharge from the hospice service.  There is always an option for the patient to be re-referred in the future should their needs change.

 

Reviewed HK 24.11.23