Ethos Health: A snapshot from our CEO – 6 months in review

Blink! The first six months of 2017 has gone in a flash. Well, this is an attempt to stop, reflect and share what we have been doing and what you can expect from the team at Ethos Health for the rest of the year as we continue on our mission to inspire, create and deliver solutions to improve the health and safety of people and organisations. As a mid-year review I will provide a brief outline of What’s Happened so far this year and What’s New.

What’s Happened?

Our Clinical team of physiotherapy, exercise physiology and dietetics has been actively supporting our clients to be the best in health.

One of the major highlights was the conclusion of the Diabetes Blitz program we ran in collaboration with NIB. Diabetes Blitz is a systematic, intensive 12-week diabetes management program is for individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). The program addresses the lifestyle and modifiable determinants of T2DM by providing people with the knowledge, skills and resources to improve their diabetes control and general health. The program saw 89 participants experience clinically significant improvement in key marker including weight, HbA1c, cholesterol, triglycerides, and liver function.

Our Clinical team has continued to develop and foster relationships with clients and partners. A number of relationships with sporting clubs have been supported through the Recovery Clinic, training and game day support, to ensure athletes can perform at their best. We wish all those clubs the best as the final series is quickly approaching and look forward to continuing to work with you. These clubs include:

We also continue to work with an increasing number of workplaces with their pre-employment, injury treatment and management, workers compensation, return to work and other health needs to ensure their health and safety is optimised in the workplace. Better health in the workplace also means better health is taken home.

Our Workplace Services team has also been busy delivering our core services, which include:

• Fatigue Management – Risk assessment / Subject matter expertise / Policy and procedure development / Education & Training
• Musculoskeletal – Manual handling training / Injury treatment & Return To Work management / Work station & Ergonomics
• Onsite Physiotherapy -Injury treatment / Return to work management / Education & training
• Corporate Health and Wellness -Workshops / Challenges (weight loss, step challenges, fitness challenges)

Our clients this year have included Ausgrid, Newcastle City Council, Lake Macquarie City Council, HealthShare NSW, Glencore, BHPB Mitsubishi Alliance, Golding Mining, Centennial Coal, Thiess, Australian Rail and Track Corporation, Protec, Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, Tinonee Gardens, Warringah Council, nib health funds, Sparke Helmore, Hunter Water, NSW Port Corporation and Klosters.

What’s NEW?

At the start of the year we planned a number of new projects. These included opening an expanded clinic at Lake Macquarie Private Hospital, launching the RESHAPE Healthy Weight Initiative Implementation Guide with the NSW Minerals Council and continuing to innovate our service offering across products. It is with some satisfaction I can report that we have delivered on this and more.

Ethos Clinic at Lake Macquarie Specialist Medical Centre

In June we expanded our presence at Lake Macquarie Specialist Medical Centre to strengthen our affiliation with the hospital, including our existing Saturday Sports Injury Service at the LMPH Emergency Department, and importantly to continue to offer a local, high quality service to the people of Lake Macquarie and Charlestown. Our Lake Macquarie Clinic is staffed by Senior Physiotherapists David Naylor and Chris Morton, plus APA Sports Physiotherapist Tim Schneider and offers treatment for:

• Pre- and post-operative physiotherapy
• Sports injuries
• Workers compensation and early intervention treatment
• Third party and DVA referrals
• Private patients
• Plasters, casting, brace fitting and thermoplastic splinting
• Exercise prescription and rehabilitation

Learn more: Lake Macquarie Practice

C-Fit – Training through treatment for people with cancer

We are also excited to share the commencement of our NEW C-Fit… Training through treatment for people with cancer. This is a collaboration with The Hunter Cancer Centre – a group of organisations and medical specialists, based at and supported by Lake Macquarie Private Hospital, who work together to provide holistic and integrated oncology care.

Learn More: C-Fit Program

RESHAPE – Healthy Weight Initiative

RESHAPE was conceived by a sub-committee of the NSW Minerals Council Work Health & Safety Committee. The group was formed to develop a framework for a coordinated plan of action for mining operations to engage in industry-wide change to prevent and manage obesity. To reshape something means ‘to shape again or into different form’ or ‘to change its structure or organisation’. The word RESHAPE not only aligns with the vision of the Blueprint for the Management or Overweight and Obesity in the NSW Mining Industry (‘to lose 1kg at a time, one miner at a time, one year at a time’), it also reflects the changes required to achieve this goal at an organisational and individual level.

Ethos Health has had an integral role partnering with the committee and has led the development of the Implementation Guide. The Implementation Guide has been designed to underpin all obesity initiatives in NSW mining operations. It provides a practical, effective and systematic approach to the implementation and evaluation of obesity related activities. We are looking forward to its launch at this year’s NSWMC Healthy and Safety Conference in August. The lead the mining industry is taking is already attracting a lot of interest from other industries. 

InBody – Body Composition Assessment

We are currently awaiting the arrival of our new Inbody Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) machine. It offers a standardised, rapid, practical, minimally invasive and relatively inexpensive approach to analysing body composition. BIA has proven to be highly correlated with gold standard imaging techniques for quantifying whole body mass, such as, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerised tomography (CT) scans. The advantage of BIA as an alternative to these measures is it can be done in a short amount of time and at a fraction of the cost. This will be available for individual clients who come to our clinic and corporate clients completing a range of workforce health programs. In our trials the Inbody machine has proven to be a mechanism to achieve a high level of engagement from the workforce in corporate programs.

Please contact us if you would like any more information on our new service offerings or book an online appointment