Childrens Specialist Centre Christchurch

Childrens Specialist Centre Christchurch understand that children create our world and adults hand them a legacy for the future. So what more important sector of society is there to protect, heal and nurture? The Children’s Specialist Centre in Christchurch was set up by four inspired doctors to provide a tailored and far-reaching facility to do just these things.

Deciding to embark on a mission targeted at diagnosing and treating health issues affecting children, adolescents and their families was a natural course of action for these medical specialists.

Already medical practitioners operating independently, the four connected as professionals while sharing knowledge, experiences and ideas. They realised that New Zealand lacked a cohesive child and adolescent health service that offered care for a broad spectrum of pediatric conditions.

Not only cohesive, but child, parent and family-friendly — key aspects which can impact the receptiveness of a patient to medical intervention and its long term success. A kind and sympathetic face at the front desk and echoed by each specialist enables parents and youngsters to relax, trust and have confidence in their healing for the duration of treatment.

The four directors collaborated at length to come up with a plan to create this culture of care with the idea to encourage the inclusion of several other specialists in time to come. When collaboration between doctors occurs, amazing ideas come to life in the form of industry-shattering health startups!

Diagnosing and mending the health of young humans from babyhood to adolescence can be a complicated and sometimes emotionally fraught process. The Children’s Specialist Centre understand the vulnerabilities this age group inevitably incurs so creating a facility which provides exemplary care in a comfortable and non-judgmental environment is a mandate the directors are committed to upholding and have done so since its inception in 2007.

The Childrens Specialist Centre Christchurch evolved as part of a process determined by a little bit of fate and a lot of hard work to formulate an enterprise geared up to meet the brief, but the result for kids’ health has proven to be outstanding.

Referrals:

Please be advised that all GP referrals will be processed and triaged by our team before we can arrange an appointment and that our current wait time is approximately 3 months due to unprecedented demand. This waiting time does not apply to our Paediatric surgeons and dietitians.

As all our clinicians work at the Children’s Specialist Centre part time while practising elsewhere in the South Island or in Christchurch Public Hospital, triaging can take up to 2 weeks.

We will contact you to schedule an appointment once the referral has been accepted or will notify your GP if the referral has been declined.

Please accept that we are all working as hard as possible and apologise for the waiting times.  We do understand it is stressful when you need to wait for your child to be seen.

Due to inundated referrals and our upcoming Christmas closure, the following specialists have their books closed until future notice.

Colin Watt, psychiatrist, Maria Casey, Sonja Blackburn and Seonaid Plamer, psychologists.

Christmas Closure

Our last practice day for the year is Thursday the 19^th of December 2024 and we-reopen on Monday the  20^th  of January 2025.

During this period of time,  we are not accepting or triaging any referrals received.

Please contact your health provider for any urgent matters or repeats scripts during this time.

Opening Hours 

• Monday 9am – 2.30pm
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 9am – 4.30 pm
• Fridays Closed

Prescriptions

On going repeat prescriptions are available from your GP.

The charge for a repeat script from your specialist here at Children’s Specialist Centre is $25.00.

We require 5 working day’s notice.

HealthOne:

“Please note that this organisation is contributing to, and accessing healthcare information from HealthOne –

What is HealthOne?

HealthOne is a South Island based secure electronic record that allows registered healthcare providers directly involved in your healthcare, to quickly access information such as your test results, allergies, medications, GP summaries and hospital information.

HealthOne adheres to the principles of the Privacy Act 2020 as well as the Rules set out in the Health Information Privacy Code 2020. Access is only possible via an approved highly secure healthcare information network which is regularly audited and tested.

Privacy auditing is used to check that only those directly involved in your care are accessing your information.

To find out more about HealthOne

Website: https://healthone.org.nz

Please note that you are entitled to restrict the sharing of your healthcare records.

Phone: 0508 837 872

Email: HealthOne.privacy@pegasus.health.nz

Clinic Update:

To all our patients and future patients, please be tolerant with us at this time.

We are functioning on minimal staff and will endeavour to continue to offer our services to you.

There could be a slight delay answering email enquiries and phone calls.

Covid19 Link https://covid19.govt.nz/

Some conditions we are called on to treat include: