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The Health Specialist Centre (HSC) is an innovative social enterprise model which provides private health care. It is a medical centre and a hotel, owned by Aiono Dr Alec Ekeroma and was opened in May 2018.
The HSC has two consulting rooms that will carry out minor/local anaesthetic procedures, a waiting room and a pharmacy/laboratory. The computers in every clinical area links to electronic patient files stored securely in the cloud. The centre is working towards being a paperless operation with specialist entering all data electronically which will assist in discussions with specialists overseas. According to Aiono, the clinical services can be expanded into hotel rooms if there is a demand and a cost-benefit assessment justifies as such in the future. This development has been strategically planned so that as demand grows, expansion of specialist activity to other rooms can occur, as long as new services are justified. Since most specialists are working part time and after-hours, and the clinics structured and rostered, the two rooms currently allocated is sufficient space into the medium term. The specialist centre is in a prime location close to the Tupua Tamasese Meaole (TTM) Hospital and the medical and nursing schools.
The HSC specialists will be credentialed to perform within their scope of practice and will be required to sign a code of conduct that will cover knowledge of patient’s rights, a duty to clinical audit and clinical governance. The contractors will form their own group led by a clinical director and are mandated to develop, sign off and implement clinical protocols and processes such as health and safety, infection control, patient satisfaction. The clinical group will handle all matters of clinical governance.