6 | QE Health and Wellness Centre Virginia Wright Geothermal resource point of difference REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT QE Health has been a feature of Rotorua’s health and wellbeing landscape in some form or another for the last 80 years. It began in 1942 as a convalescent hospital for returned servicemen from World War II. By 1948, as that need waned, it accepted patients from the Rotorua Sanatorium suffering from arthritis, rheumatism and allied complaints. The treatment for these chronic conditions and the pain that goes with them included “exercise, counselling, recreation, occupational and physiotherapy plus balneotherapy or spa treatments”. These days the treatments are called geothermal rehabilitation services, and the roots of the former hospital can still be seen in the current centre’s holistic approach to health and wellbeing as they continue to treat a range of rheumatic, multi-disciplinary musculoskeletal rehabilitation, arthritic conditions and the chronic pain commonly associated with them all. The centre passed through Government administration and the Waikato Hospital Board before passing into private hands in 1993. The current Queen Elizabeth Hospital Community Trust became sole shareholders in 2005 operating as a not-for-profit charitable organisation. The current CEO Dr Aaron Randell has worked there for 12 years and has been CEO for the last three. Over the years, while the treatment regimes have kept up with modern practice, the building, dating back to 1942, has struggled to keep up, and a new purpose-built health and wellness facility will be fully operational this year. The facility’s point of difference - the geothermal resource (namely the geothermal water and the mud) - are fully integrated into the new facility in their clinical capacity. Even with the Returned Servicemen back in the 1940’s it wasn’t just physical rehabilitation, it was mind, body, spirit, as Aaron explains. “It was ground-breaking in those days and that’s what’s carried all the way through. With conditions like rheumatology and other chronic conditions we’re dealing with people that need more than just the physical rehabilitation component. You can’t just fix one part of it, it’s the whole person that needs to be treated, or worked with.” QE Health holds a number of different contracts with both ACC and the Ministry of Health (with what would formerly have been various DHB’s) and deal with both acute and chronic conditions being particularly well set up for the latter. It is the Rheumatology Department for the Rotorua Lakes Region with appropriate on-site specialists as well as various allied health services such as psychology, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy; they also offer rehabilitation services for people 65 and over designed to keep them living independently. Fundamental to QE Health’s ethos is the belief that ‘to be healthy a person needs to experience optimal levels of functioning in their physical, mental and social lives, from their perspective’. Many of the chronic health conditions they work with, usually with associated pain, whether it’s fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis or someone suffering post-polio, are often not curable or ‘fixable’. Their treatment includes “working with the client to help them understand the condition, come to terms with it, and be the best person they can be while living with it,” explains Aaron. “We have a three-week residential programme which includes education as to how their condition affects their wellbeing; physical mental and spiritual. It applies equally for someone living with a chronic condition struggling to find their way forward, or someone who’s just been diagnosed. We can help frontfoot what their future looks like, how they can return home and live life to the fullest.” Whatever their condition and the accompanying need, the new, bespoke facility means that the practitioners and specialists that may be part of their multi-disciplinary team can enjoy working in premises built expressly for ease of collaboration in their care. The architects and designers spent time with staff as well as clients. “They wanted to understand the issues around trying to do what we do out of a building that wasn’t designed for it, and how we would like to be able to provide those services in a new building,” says Aaron. He’s looking forward to the ease of working in a building that now has a single entrance with one reception desk rather than three; where the services are all grouped together . From left: Dennis Cresswell (Commercial Manager, Watts & Hughes Construction), Aaron Randell (CEO, QE Health), Guy Brown (Project Manager, Veros), Cole Weston (Site Manager, Watts & Hughes Construction.)
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