Owners of the Bright Side Clinic in Byron’s Sunrise estate say they’re hopeful of formalising a lease to a new general medical clinic before the end of the year.
Bright Side announced the clinic’s closure with little warning via social media in late October, telling patients their medical records were being transferred to one of three other clinics in the region depending on where their GPs went.
Dr Carlotta Cunha was moving to a First Light Health clinic in Ballina, but there was a gap of unknown time between her departure from Sunrise and her start date in Ballina.
Dr Doug Mouncey was moving to the Gum Tree Family Medical clinic in Goonellabah and Dr James Haslam to SunDoctors in Byron Bay.
The Bright Side Medical and Skin Cancer Centre would close on Friday, 1 November 2024, Bright Side said on Facebook.
Patients on social media expressed frustration at the loss of services, particularly in relation to bulk-billing.
The company later told The Echo the closure was temporary and new GP clinic operators were being sought after one of the established GPs in the clinic had changed their mind ‘for personal reasons’ about buying the business.
Community need for Sunrise GP clinic obvious
Both Bright Side and departed GP Dr James Haslam declined to say which GP had been considering the deal but Dr Haslam said it was obvious Bright Side were closing the business because it wasn’t profitable.
‘Medicare rebates have been frozen for a long time,’ Dr Haslam said, ‘in the meantime, everything else skyrockets’.
‘It’s not surprising clinics are having a harder time turning a profit,’ he said.
A spokesperson for Bright Side said their parent company had always intended to operate a skin clinic but that during their time running both skin specialist and GP services, the community need for a continued GP service became obvious.
‘National Skin Cancer Centres acquired The Brightside Clinic a few years ago, with the intention of gradually transitioning it into a dedicated Skin Cancer Clinic,’ the spokesperson said.
‘As our lease approached renewal, and with our company expertise being in Skin Cancer Medicine, we felt it best to sell the practice to a General Practice focused party,’ she said.
‘Unfortunately, at the last moment, our buyer withdrew from the acquisition for personal reasons and advised they would be moving to another practice.
‘Shortly afterward, the other two doctors at the clinic informed us they had secured positions at other practices and would be departing at the end of October.’
Left without a buyer to continue operations and without doctors to provide care, Bright Side announced the clinic’s closure.
The company had received interest from multiple parties eager to assume the lease and restart operations since then, the spokesperson said, and was ‘actively collaborating with these parties to reopen the clinic as soon as possible, ensuring that patients can once again access care at Brightside’.
Medicare rebates leave GP clinics struggling
Dr Haslam said he guessed around half the regular patients using Brightside services during his time there over the past eighteen months or so could be described as vulnerable.
Most were bulk-billed, he said.
The Bright Side spokesperson said it would be up to the new clinic operators to decide on its future services in terms of fee structure but also named bulk-billing rebates as an issue.
‘Often practices and GPs simply can’t afford to sustain the operating cost of the centre and keep their doors open when they are bulk billing patients,’ the spokesperson said.
An announcement would be made once a new operator was confirmed, she said.
The Echo also sought comment from Drs Cunha and Mouncey.
Byron skin clinic ‘extremely busy’
Meanwhile, the need for skin specialist services in the region is also high, as shown in recent data on rates of skin cancer reported.
Dr Haslam now works at a clinic dedicated to skin conditions and said the practice was extremely busy.
Most of the patients suffering from the most dire, or Level 4 classed skin cancers, were elderly and living rurally, he said, and didn’t have histories of regular checkups.
Prevention and early detection were key, he said, to avoiding advanced levels of skin cancer.
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