A Queensland cardiologist has taken his practice on the road to deliver specialist heart care services to rural and regional areas, working from a converted semitrailer
Dr Rolf Gomes spent more than $1 million developing the mobile medical clinic, which he dubbed Heart of Australia.
An Australian first, the clinic was a custom-built, 25-metre long semitrailer fully equipped with specialist diagnostic equipment.
“The idea came to me over five years ago when I was practicing out in some of the regional areas as a junior doctor and registrar,” Dr Gomes said.
“I experienced at that time how difficult it was for patients out in these areas to access the services that patients in the city take for granted.”
The truck was fitted out to perform stress testing, cardiac ultrasound, halter monitoring and a whole suite of other non-invasive cardiac and respiratory tests.
“What that allows us to do, in a practical sense, is to close that loop from symptom to diagnosis to treatment, potentially all within 24 hours,” Dr Gomes said.
The semitrailer will be staffed by a rotating team of cardiologists and respiratory specialists.
Cardiac sonographer Stefanie Purcell came on board to help treat patients in Dalby, in south-west Queensland.
“It’s just as good as what I would get in a public hospital or a private hospital,” Mrs Murcell said.
“It’s more than enough space and the facilities are the same as what we would get in Brisbane.”
‘We hope to save lives in the bush’
Heart disease was the leading cause of death in Australia, with people who lived in rural or remote areas facing significantly higher risks.
“One in five people in urban areas suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease, but in the country areas in can be as high as one in four,” Dr Gomes said.
He hoped bringing specialist cardiac care to remote areas to help change that.
“The hope is to ultimately to save lives in the bush,” Dr Gomes said.
“One of the things with cardiovascular disease is that if you detect the symptoms early there are lots of treatments which will prevent you having a heart attack, and certainly prevent people dying unexpectedly or unnecessarily.”
Truck to travel up to 80,000km a year
Dr Gomes says after he graduated and later opened his own private practice, he realised it would be possible to take his practice to his patients.
“I looked around and thought ‘there’s no reason why we can’t take everything I do here, put it in a mobile entity and bring the services out to the people in the bush’,” he said.
A partnership between Heart of Australia and Arrow Energy helped make the idea a reality, and Dr Gomes’s potentially life-saving mobile service hit the road for the first time earlier this month.
Its first circuit will see the truck travel in a fortnightly rotation across the Surat Basin, stopping at Dalby, Roma, Charleville, St George and Goondiwindi.
The Heart of Australia team is planning on travelling between 70,000 and 80,000 kilometres a year.
For a full timetable, visit heartofaustralia.com