The Annex at the 24 Hour Surgery
The 24 Hour Surgery’s new Annex is providing additional clinical space during the Surgery’s busy periods.
Operations Manager Claire McQuilken says The Annex at 933 Colombo Street opened in December 2014, with some staff concerned that the team would be split across the car park. “However, within a few weeks we were getting requests to work there, particularly from GPs who enjoyed being in a more familiar General Practice setting,” she says.
The house, which had been used by a General Practice following the earthquakes, has been organised to accommodate up to four GPs and a nursing team, with the layout and resources standardised to be just like the main 24 Hour Surgery. A staff education room is also available and being used for Advanced Care Life Support Training, offered to General Practice.
Claire says families love The Annex, especially the fact that it is child friendly and they can sit out in the garden while they wait. “One day we had a family with three children who had chicken pox. The Mum and Dad set up a picnic on the lawn, while they all waited to see a doctor. It was just so much better for them than being cooped up in the main waiting room.”
To be treated at The Annex, patients need to be clinically safe, stable, ambulatory and unlikely to need an X-ray. Claire says it is always the patient’s choice to go to The Annex but many say they like it because “it is quieter and a bit more relaxed”.
One of the consequences of opening The Annex has been that the 24 Hour Surgery’s main waiting room is often much less busy. “Some Christmases we have had standing room only but last Christmas everyone thought that we were having a quieter time. When we checked the figures, we found that we had actually been busier than the year before but couldn’t tell thanks to The Annex.”
By the end of the financial year, 5100 patients had been seen in The Annex. “We’d be lost without it now," Claire says.