An IUD (Intrauterine Device) is a small, T-shaped device that offers highly effective, long-term contraception — lasting up to 5 years for hormonal options like Mirena or up to 10 years for copper IUDs.

Dr Kemm provides caring, confidential consultations to discuss your contraceptive options and ensure the procedure is safe, comfortable, and tailored to your needs. Whether you’re exploring birth control choices or ready to have your current IUD replaced or removed, we’re here to help.

📞 Book an appointment online or call (03) 5968 4622  to schedule your consultation.

Emerald Medical Centre – personalised women’s health care, close to home.

Updates to Chronic Condition Care Plans

From 1 July 2025, Medicare is updating how chronic disease care plans (also called GP Management Plans) are structured. These changes are designed to make things simpler for patients, GPs, and allied health professionals.

What is a Care Plan?

A chronic disease care plan is a personalised health roadmap created by your GP (and often supported by our nurses). It helps you manage ongoing or long-term health conditions such as:

• Diabetes
• Asthma
• Heart disease
• Arthritis
• Mental health conditions

And many other conditions lasting 6 months or more

The plan outlines your treatment goals, the services you need, and how your healthcare team will work together to support you.

Who is Eligible?

You may be eligible for a care plan if you have a health condition that has lasted, or is likely to last, six months or longer.
Your GP will assess your situation and work with you to decide whether a plan is right for you

What Do You Get with a Care Plan?

• A clear, tailored plan to help you stay on top of your health
• Access to up to five Medicare-subsidised visits each year with allied health providers, such as physiotherapists, podiatrists, dietitians, psychologists, and others
• Bulk-billed nurse led review appointments every three months at our clinic, to make sure your care is still on track

What This Means for You

Ultimately, these changes are about reducing paperwork and making care more coordinated. Your health support, access to allied health visits, and quarterly reviews all remain the same.

If you have any questions or would like to check if you’re eligible for a care plan, please ask your GP or nurse at your next appointment. We’re here to help you every step of the way.

We are truly amazed at how responsible you have been at staying home & keeping our community safe from coronavirus.

We have seen an unexpected consequence being that people are accessing their GP less during the pandemic, possibly for fear of catching the virus itself in the clinic or as an act of altruism to free up clinical resources due to a misconception that GPs are busy fighting the pandemic.

The reality is that we are striving to keep our clinic safe by deterring people with viral infections from entering the clinic & offering, where possible, telehealth appointments to assist our loyal patients.

There continues to be a good availability to see or speak to the GPs or nurses here.

At EMC we remain committed to maintaining the good health of our community & feel passionately that people should still access their GP for routine & emergency care rather than put it off until the pandemic has passed. No health concern or symptom is trivial in our minds & we are eager to continue to provide our usual service, even in these unusual times.

For more information follow the RACGP campaign at: https://www.expertadvicematters.com.au/

SATURDAY 8TH APRIL 12.30 – 4PM

It is with great pride we announce that Emerald Medical Centre’s renovations are finally complete and our team is ready to provide you with a new level of comprehensive patient-centred care. Be a part of the community celebrations as we welcome in this advancement in patient care and clinical excellence.

PERFORMANCES BY

• Gemco Community Theatre
• Emerald Primary School Choir
• The Emerald Ukulele band

PLUS

• Free sausage sizzle
• Emergency vehicles on show
• Art pieces from The Emerald Art Society
• Kid’s face painters
• Balloon Artist

Dr Murphy, the founder of Emerald Medical Centre was devoted to Emerald and practised medicine up to the day he died. Here’s an article from The Trader published in 1981 after he died. It is an engaging story about this important figure in Emerald’s history.

Over the past year, everyone passing the first roundabout on the main road will have seen that Emerald has a large new building. Five years in the planning and over 18 months in the execution, the extensive redevelopment and refurbishment of the Emerald Medical Centre is finally due to be complete in early March 2017!

WE plan a Community Grand Opening to coincide with the PAVE Festival (hopefully on 8 April). The building has been totally redeveloped so that it will be fit-for-purpose for the newest developments in Primary Health Care, called the Patient Centred Medical Home, or PCMH.

General Practices like Emerald Medical Centre have always tried to deliver care to its people that is tailored to and based on the needs of the patient. It tries to be comprehensive, so that every need is met, preferably locally. We attempt to coordinate your care, so that your needs that are not available locally are sourced and arranged by our team. All care is integrated, so that each member of your health team is kept abreast of your progress. In particular, we will follow up your recent visits to hospital or specialists.

We have agreement from Physio, Podiatry, Psychologists, Counsellor, Diabetes Nurse Educator, Audiologist, speech pathologist, exercise physiologist and Pathology to work on-site. We are trying to attract an XRay service to Emerald, but this is problematic. We have identified a range of specialists who will visit EMC once or twice a month so that patients will not have to travel as often. We will offer a base for the RDNS, Palliative Care and other outreach services. We already have links with the Emerald Secondary School where our GPs and Nurses will have a presence in the new Wellbeing Facility.

All GPs and Nurses are co-located upstairs around our new bright and spacious waiting room. Our vision is that our staff will enable you to enter data into your file from Tablets we provide. There is a lift for access, although we urge you to use the stairs for your own exercise. We have built a multipurpose room to enable patient education, group meetings and mild exercise and relaxation classes. The room has videoconferencing facilities to enable consultations with distant specialists and public and staff education via webinars.

The new building will be supported by a 30 kW solar system with battery back-up. We will be largely off the grid! This will enable us to provide services during occasional blackouts, but more importantly, will protect our electricity supply during a major disaster, like a bushfire. Emerald Medical Centre is the Medical Centre for the local Emerald and District Disaster Plan. This will enable us to guarantee a cool and powered Emergency Centre in a major event.

All of these innovations, services, connections and additional health workers are designed to enable us to work with individuals and our community to provide a Patient Centred Medical Home of which we will all be proud. This is a shared opportunity between Emerald Medical Centre and our Community to increase Community Security and Resilience. We look forward to working with you all to fulfil our Vision.

George Somers and the Team at Emerald Medical Centre

We are excited to announce that we are almost at completion with the building. Your new “Medical Home” is rapidly taking shape and we expect the lift to be functional in the next week or so.

Things are moving quickly on our renovations! Here’s a photo we snapped of the latest developments.

My Health Record is the new name of the national digital health record system. Having a My Health Record means your important health information, like allergies, medical conditions and treatments, medicine details, and test or scan reports, can be digitally stored in one place.

For further information or to register, please see myhealthrecord.gov.au