Making waves in Highbrook: Accessible healthcare in the workplace

Accessible Healthcare at Highbrook Business Park

If making healthcare in the workplace more accessible is a goal for your business, read on. Our GM, Lucy Hall looks back on our first full year of improving the employee wellbeing of our Highbrook Business Park whānau.

Looking out over Highbrook Business Park, you could almost forget the rollercoaster ride last year took its inhabitants on. From the clinic consult room windows, it all looks green and peaceful. And we’re pretty much the only ones still wearing masks as of last week! There’s one year of growth on the landscaping, and it’s hard to believe that last September, the last licks of paint were still drying, and final clinic designs were being signed off by the Focusplan team.

Celebrating our Clinic’s one-year anniversary (since we opened in Lockdown!)

It felt like we’d reached the mountain peak when Reverend Mahaki Albert, Director Hauora Māori, East Health Trust, blessed our Highbrook Whare through connection to the land to serve its purpose and people well. It wasn’t the social, big launch we’d intended but somehow felt more auspicious. Moreover, we all hoped our dream of taking healthcare where it is needed would still be possible. Covid lockdown restrictions were very much in play.

Thankfully, the Reverend’s blessing worked. One year on, we couldn’t be more proud of how our team have successfully upheld our promise of making healthcare in the workplace accessible.

Reverend Mahaki Albert blessed the new Highbrook clinic in 2021 with a Karakia

Our goal is to Improve Employee Wellbeing (by coming to your place of work)

And so, a totally new health concept was born. Backed by a tightly defined set of values, we had the ambition to take healthcare out of the clinic to where it is needed: The workplace.

This unconventional approach to healthcare arrived at a wholly unconventional time. Opening our doors mid-Lockdown required us to look through a very different patient lens to understand that challenging journey. Naturally, we’d originally anticipated that employees in the Highbrook Park would be able to simply pop in for a check-up or invite our medical team to their workplace. Tikanga a Whānau – accessibility – had never been more important. Fortunately, we had a plan.

Our CEO, Loretta Hansen captures it best: “The Highbrook concept was designed from the get-go with the flexibility to tailor to the local environment. We already had a people-first approach to offer the Manaakitanga (unconditional support) people need to thrive. So, fortunately, it meant we’d designed our patient experience carefully with Tikanga a Whānau (accessible healthcare) in mind.”

So, during the course of the year, we focused further on the accessibility of healthcare by:

Offering affordable fee structures and the opportunity for businesses to subsidise or cover wellbeing services, screenings and training.
Attracting a multilingual, culturally diverse team who understands the individual needs of our community of workers and families. Including persuading Dr Durshanapally and Dr Sievwright to come on board!
Mobilising our teams to take healthcare into businesses with high-quality services and assessment technology.
Ensuring ease of enrolment with support from our customer service team and a simple online user experience.
Moreover, our clinical team rolled their sleeves up to write helpful tips that families could access from home to care for unwell whānau with Covid or learn about preventative screening.
More recently, we rolled out an After hours partnership with online doctor service Practice Plus. This service integrates feedback into our Patient Portal, MyIndici for continuity of care on their health journey.

“Our enrolments started to roll in thanks to our easy online enrolments experience, and subsequent telehealth appointments commenced for patients despite the lockdown. We were in business,” said Clinical Director, Dr Daniel Calder.

Partnering with employees in the Highbrook Business Park to improve workplace wellbeing for South Aucklanders

It wasn’t long before a host of forward-thinking businesses got on board. Thanks to the early adoption of forward-thinking Partners like Newly Wed Foods, our mobile team sprang into action instantaneously with very necessary Covid support services. Next, the Health and Wellbeing team at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare approached us to roll out a Flu Vaccination Campaign in anticipation of the tumultuous winter ahead. Soon, the likes of Bidfoods, Programmed, Mr Chips and Subaru joined the ranks as our partnership model grew.

Possibly the most important part of Patient Journey planning is making sure people don’t fall ill at all! Hence why training the Newly Wed team on Supervised RAT Testing was the first port of call. Andrew Powell, GM at Newly Weds led the co-design Partnership. “We met with Lucy and together wrote procedures. Next, we completed a dry run and started testing. There was never a ‘no, we can’t do this or can’t do that’ – Highbrook were very open to working together. We never felt like they brought a cookie cutter approach – it’s a very bespoke service.”

Today, it means many employee wellbeing plans are co-designed with business stakeholders like Andrew Powell who are serious about supporting the health of their Highbrook teams.

Keeping upstream with the latest and greatest in clinical quality and service offerings

For me, there’s nothing better than seeing our clinical teams head out the door to look after people in their place of business. Traditionally, people have assumed they must come to the clinic for health assessments. This is especially true if assessment technology or equipment is needed for diagnosis or treatment. But the reality is, we’ve acquired an arsenal of amazing, portable technology that allows us to come to you.

Namely, our Point of site Blood testing machine is often met with surprise when it’s set up in businesses. It’s an impressive piece of kit. “From Pop-up vaccination services to Wellbeing Lifestyle Workshops, we’ve been able to offer a tremendous amount of health screening services to people who often don’t have time to get away from work. Visiting new businesses is one of my favourite parts of my job.”, says Dr Jayani Kannangara.

Of course, there’s never a better measure of success than hearing about Patient experience from real people. Following Subaru’s recent Mobile Van health assessments team members gave heartwarming feedback:

“Mary was very friendly, she made me feel very comfortable and relaxed. She talked me through everything with detail. She was so nice, and her assistant was helpful and lovely too. Great experience overall.”

Join us in our movement to make employee workplace medical care more accessible

With the arrival of Spring, it’s safe to say we have one especially hard winter behind us. (Thank goodness!) So, as a clinic, it definitely feels like a time to expand our reach. As our range of workplace services grows, we hope you’ll join us in our mission: to connect the employees of Highbrook Business Park with unconditional support to improve their wellbeing – allowing them to reach their full potential.

No doubt you take your employee wellbeing as seriously as we take our Patient Experience. So, if you’d like to explore how we can support your business or workplace with accessible, onsite medical and healthcare – no matter how big or small – drop me an email: lucyh@healthimprovementgroup.nz or fill out our business contact form.

Nga mihi maioha to all our Partners and whānau in the Highbrook Park

Finally, we wanted to extend our thanks to everyone who has made this new health initiative possible. We’ve been supported by so many amazing people: from the Counties Manukau DHB to Business East Tāmaki and Health Improvement Group, not to mention all of our customers and team. Through our kotahitanga (togetherness), we know we can make waves of change in Highbrook and beyond.

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