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About RivMed
Riverina Medical and Dental Aboriginal Corporation is an Aboriginal community controlled primary health care service operated by the Aboriginal community of the Riverina. Its primary purpose is to provide culturally safe and holistic health services to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Wagga Wagga and surrounding areas.
The Riverina Medical and Dental Aboriginal Corporation, or RivMed as it is widely known, has become a leader in the provision of primary health care services. The services provided are comprehensive and reflect the growing need of Aboriginal people to have access to primary health care services including preventative health care programs such as dental services, screening programs and health education programs.The core programs also reflect the need to continue to address the inequality in health outcomes that continue. Those core programs include medical services, eye health and family health, drug and alcohol counselling and advocacy support.
This year RivMed will be moving the Medical Services to the newly renovated building in Edward Street. This is an exciting time for RivMed as it means that staff and clients will have access to far more space when providing and accessing services. Dental services and administrative services will remain at Trail Street. The Family Health Team will relocate to Trail Street.
The renovations have been delayed because of unexpected building problems that came to light whilst undertaking the renovations. Major structural problems were identified with the roof and additional funding has been sought to rectify this. It is expected that the building will be fully functional in early 2011.
This year, the Board of Directors have commenced a service wide review of RivMed. This is a fundamental role of Directors of any organisation, but has particular importance when the service provides health and medical services. This is because it is essential to ensure that the services delivered by RivMed are the best quality that they can be, are current and evidenced based and are meeting the needs of clients and the community. RivMed continues to hold accreditation through the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) accreditation standards (through AGPAL). The Board has decided that in addition to this, RivMed will seek accreditation through the Quality Improvement Council (QIC) standards, (through Quality Management Services (QMS), the license administrators for NSW). The QIC standards are different to the RACGP standards in that the QIC standards cover the operations of the entire organisation, including governance, management, service delivery and coordination, finance management, human resource management, community participation and stakeholder involvement. They are extremely rigorous standards and should RivMed be successful, we will be amongst only a small handful of Aboriginal organisations around the country to achieve this.
RivMed continues to strive to alleviate the burden of poor health outcomes and therefore increase the opportunity for enjoyment of life through good health. It is the hope of RivMed that the coming year will bring greater opportunities to achieve this through expanded service delivery, the development of cooperative working relationships with other service providers and stakeholders and most importantly by responding effectively to the needs of the community in which we work.