By Jessica Micallef
Ochre Lancefield Country Practice is celebrating its 10th birthday this year.
Founding doctors Paul Carter and Marina Kefford established the business on February 2, 2009, with a vision to provide a high quality medical service in Lancefield.
“Before we started, Lancefield had a sort of off-again, on-again medical service, sometimes there’d be someone here sometimes not,” Dr Carter said.
“The town wasn’t doing that well at the time, the banks had closed and High Street was pretty quiet.
“And we felt very strongly that the people of Lancefield deserved more and I’d been working in the area for 32 years … so Marina Kefford and I decided to start this practice with a view of it being an ongoing thing.”
Shortly before the country practice opened, more businesses had opened in Lancefield.
“The Bendigo Bank opened and we attracted the pharmacy and between ourselves and the bank it really injected a great more deal of life into the centre of the town … I look around and see how busy the town is and I feel proud that we’d been an important part of making that happen,” Dr Carter said.
He said the best part of working at the practice was his team.
“This is the nicest group of people I have ever worked with in my life,” Dr Carter said.
“It’s like a really good soccer team, you can pass the ball to anybody and know they are going to do the right thing.
“We have no internal bickering … it’s the most beautiful working team of people.”
Dr Carter said it felt “wonderful” to know his business had been opened for a decade and he is now looking forward to the practice’s future.
“We have a motto, which is: towards a healthier happier community, and I think that my goal is that we will continue fulfilling that mission into the foreseeable future,” Dr Carter said.
