Bairnsdale Medical Group

438 Main Street, Bairnsdale, 3875

Phone : 03 5152 4123  |  Fax : 03 5152 1549

GP Supervisor(s)

Dr David McConville, Dr Andrew Rutherford

GPs

Dr Tim Watford (Snr. Partner), Dr Ross de Steiger, Dr Susan Borland

Practice Manager

Mr Piero Baglioni

Other Staff

Eleven, including 2 full-time nurses

Geography & Lifestyle

Bairnsdale is a regional centre of approximately 12,000 people situated 285 km. from Melbourne, approximately 3-3 1/4 hour drive on the Princes Highway. It is essentially a farming community surrounded by dairying, vegetable growing and beef cattle areas. It has good infrastructure supports with state and private primary schools and secondary schools.
Bairnsdale is a centre of tourism in Eastern Victoria and is approximately 2 1/4 hours to Mt Hotham and Dinner Plain ski fields. Paynesville and the tourist town of Lakes Entrance with its beaches are close by, and a little further into East Gippsland are places such as Marlo, Cape Conran and Bemm River.

Building

This long established practice, one of three in Bairnsdale, is approximately 150 metres from the Bairnsdale Regional Hospital. It is situated in a purpose-designed medical clinic. There are ten consulting rooms as well as five "emergency" cubicles and a well-equipped small operating theatre including defibrillator, hyfercater, entonox, oroscope etc. The practice has a computerised system of accounts and appointments and internet access. Each consulting room has a computer.

Clinical

The hospital has 95 beds with two resident general surgeons, a physician, a radiologist and visiting specialists from Sale, Traralgon and Melbourne on a regular basis – including gynaecologists, ophthalmologists, ENT surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, renal physician, paediatricians, and an oncologist. There are also several special accommodation houses in the area, a dementia hostel, private nursing homes in Bairnsdale and Paynesville as well as Jacarandah House hostel for the elderly.

The general practitioners have full admission rights for obstetrics, anaesthetics, paediatrics, medicine and surgery as well as managing a busy accident and emergency department.

Hours / After Hours

The practice is open 363 days of the year, with clinics run between 9.00am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and 9.30am to 12.00 noon Saturday and Sunday. After hours, one of the doctors is always on call with back up organised from a rotating roster.

Registrar Conditions

Accommodation in a two-bedroom house supplied.

There are ongoing education programs in Bairnsdale including regular monthly meetings on a Thursday night and Thursday morning radiological and pathological correlations, as well as other East Gippsland Division-organised education events such as weekend seminars on GP topics.