Bendigo Community Health Services's central and Kangaroo Flat sites will close its face-to-face service delivery during the coronavirus threat.
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From Monday face-to-face services will be centralised at the BCHS Eaglehawk site as part of changes introduced by the organisation to ensure the safety of staff and clients.
The Kangaroo Flat site will provide a pharmaco-therapy service as normal while headspace Bendigo will have a limited service.
TeleHealth and VideoHealth will be used by BCHS and headspace Bendigo staff for all non face-to-face appointments to continue providing essential health and wellbeing support to the community.
"Like all primary health services, we are playing a critical role in supporting our clients and the wider community during the response to this Coronavirus pandemic," BCHS chief executive Gerard Jose said.
"Keeping our staff, their families and the wider community safe is our primary goal and we need to minimise the number of physical sites we provide services from and work to provide access remotely where possible.
"BCHS will consolidate clinical services at Eaglehawk from Monday and provide limited service operations at our Kangaroo Flat and headspace Bendigo sites."
BCHS chief executive Gerard Jose said he believed closing some sites would mean they could be re-opened if another site became infected.
"We believe by having some sites closed, we will be able to quickly re-open them as alternative service points if we have to close others due to any possible infection outbreaks," he said.
"This will provide continuity of service for as long as possible."
Mr Jose said BCHS staff had been amazing and creative in planning to continue supporting services to ensure people get the care they need.
"Many of our staff will work remotely from home as this is the most critical measure needed to minimise the spread of coronavirus," he said.
"As a community we must be vigilant and keep the number of people moving around our communities to a minimum and reinforce infection control procedures.
"People across our communities are working hard to support each other and we know that many households will be impacted personally, emotionally and financially over the coming months.
"As a community we need to take care of ourselves as this recovery will require many current and new services into the future."
For a full list of BCHS service and program changes visit www.bchs.com.au or call 5406 1200 during business hours.
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