KAWERAU

Tarawera Medical Centre was established in August 1989 when 2 of the solo practices combined and moved into the original building at 104 Onslow St to create the first ever Kawerau medical centre. At this stage it had been very challenging for the solo practices to survive as locums were hard to find and recruiting new GPs to take on existing solo practices was impossible. The combination of 2 practices into a Kawerau medical centre for the first time allowed a full team approach to Primary Care with a full complement of Doctors, Nurses and Reception/Admin staff. A visiting Orthopaedic Surgeon (Mr. Preston Moorcroft) from Rotorua allowed Kawerau patients to access this specialist service without having to travel out of town and this service continues still with Mr. Dawie van Niewenhuis en. The medical centre concept where a number of doctors and nurses operate from a single site was new to Kawerau which had been served up until then by solo GPs running their own solo surgeries or..