About South Hill

South Hill Family Practice, has one doctor, one practice nurse, a receptionist, and Practice Manager. We also have the use of Telehealth clinicianS.

We are part of WellSouth, our PHO. They provide us with a Health Improvement Practitioner, Health Coach, and a Community Support Worker. We also have the opportunity for a clinical pharmacist to be in-clinic.

Our staff are friendly and kind, with a passion to deliver best practice primary health care services to our community.  We operate from a beautiful, old, but warm villa with lovely surrounding grounds and gardens. Onsite we have two GP Consulting rooms and two Nurse Consulting rooms.  These rooms are spacious and provide plenty of room for the necessary equipment required.  We have a wonderful cohort of patients and many families have been coming to South Hill for generations.

We have a patient kiosk that takes all clinical measurements for our patients and seamlessly inserts these results into the patient record in our Patient Management System. We do this prior to our patients entering the consult room which saves time and means you can use that time on quality care for your patients. We use Medtech Evolution 7.0 as our Patient Management System, and we also have Manage My Health so patients can look at their results and book appointments.  We have a Dunedin-based South Link Health IT team who are supportive and knowledgeable and assist whenever we encounter issues.

We have a strong bond with Te Ha o Maru a health and social service in Moeraki, Ōamaru  who provide services for tamariki, rangatahi and their whānau. Their mission is to enable whānau and hapu to prosper and to protect their takiwa.

Our current registered enrolled patient numbers are 2074. Our Māori population is 6.46% and our Pasifika population is 4.77%. We also have 6.61% Asian population. We are proactive in ensuring equity.

We have over a third of our patients who are over 65 years but as our enrolments are open for new patients, we are seeing younger families enrolling with us. We are fortunate to have seen multiple generations of families come through our doors. We love seeing them grow up and have children themselves and we are privileged to care for all their health needs.

We operate two sessions a day, morning and afternoon, and each session has twelve patient appointments.  We typically hold four, urgent, on-the-day appointments for acute needs and these are booked with our reception or nursing team.

We conduct full inductions onsite for all new staff members.  We provide ongoing training to keep up to date with regulations and there is opportunity to go to South Link Health in Dunedin to learn more about South Link and the other organisations in our group.

We have mandatory training for Cultural Safety, Cultural competency, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, this is offered by online training, and we also have in-house training opportunities with facilitators from WellSouth.

We have many resources available for all staff to access via our South Link Health Teams platform – Policies and Procedures, Te Reo Māori, Tikanga Māori, Guidelines for Foundation and Cornerstone accreditation.

About Ōamaru

Ōamaru has a population of 13,900 people.  There is a large shopping centre, cafes, restaurants; everything you need is here and the larger cities of Dunedin (1.5 hours) and Christchurch (3.25 hours) are close. There is plenty of accommodation, parks and supermarkets. Ōamaru has a rich history and heritage from Victorian streetscapes and Māori history to steampunk and gorgeous galleries.

We have partnered with local attractions to receive discounts as our community understands good health is a community wide collaboration and they want to help us attract and retain good doctors in this area by looking after you and showing you what a great place Ōamaru is.

Ōamaru is part of the Waitaki District, which is a region offering natural geological treasures, historic gems and iconic adventures.  We are notable for nature and wildlife, adventure, culture and heritage, food, walking and biking.