Rod Crowfoot - Macquarie Home Stay (28th February, 2024)

The Macquarie Homestay in Dubbo is undergoing Stage 2 construction to expand their accommodation facilities for patients who need to travel to Dubbo for medical care. The construction has already begun and will include a CWA Guest House. Currently, the Homestay has 17 units and is running at full capacity, so the expansion is necessary to meet the increasing demand. The Western Cancer Center opening in Dubbo has also contributed to the need for more accommodation. Once Stage 2 is completed, there will be a total of 43 units, but there are plans for further expansion in the future. The cost of the project is being funded through various sources. The announcement of the 2024 tour de OROC also came the announcement that they will be raising funds for the Stage 2 construction of Macquarie Homestay with a target of at least $250,000. To give us the rundown of what this new stage of construction means for the homestay, plus an outline of the excellent service that Macquarie Homestay provides, in studio with me is the Managing Director Rod Crowfoot. Good morning. Good day to you. How are you this morning? Yeah, really well, thank you. Thanks for having me. It sounds like quite a busy time. There's a lot of moving parts. I want to say moving parts, actually quite physical moving parts. For sure. Has the construction of Stage 2 actually begun? It has, and we're very excited in the last couple of weeks to announce that we'd appointed our builder, being Renasant Regional, based in Orange, and they've now started construction on this next stage, which we've been working on now for a couple of years, and so to actually now see bulldozers on site and start to sort of see all the reality of all that hard work coming together, it's actually really, really exciting for us and also the guests that stay with us as well. To sort of take it back to the beginning, for anyone new to Dubbo and like the region otherwise or if they're just unaware, what service is provided by the Macquarie Homestay? It's a really, really good question, and for a lot of locals, they don't have a need to use it, so we're very much under the radar, but for those from the region, if you sort of live out in those sort of more sort of smaller regional communities, sort of through from Narrowmine to even sort of probably more further west, Ningan, Cobar, up to Bourke. You could live in Mudgie, Coonabarabran, up to Walgett and Lightning Ridge, even out to Broken Hill and sort of across the extremities of Western New South Wales. At different times in somebody's life, there may be a need to come into Dubbo for some sort of specialist medical care, and that could be for as wonderful a thing as having a baby. Sometimes, it could be falling off the horse at the back of Woop Woop and the Royal Flying Doctors being called in with accident emergency and so they brought you to Dubbo. There could be opportunities for joint replacements or orthopedic surgery. It could be treatment at the Western Cancer Centre. Dubbo Hospital has become such a strong, drawing hospital for specialist medical care. And so when those folk, whether it be planned or unplanned, when they come, they need somewhere to stay. And so Homestay was established and we opened five years ago to provide somewhere that was, I guess, understood the challenges that comes with having to leave home for sometimes many, many weeks or months on end for treatment. So part of it was around creating an accommodation precinct that provided support for the patient but also for their family when they had to come and stay, and also helped maintain, I guess, a level of normality and routine. So being able to do your own cooking and cleaning, your own laundry, those sort of things. But also helping manage some of the financial burdens that comes with being away from home too. So we access a New South Wales government subsidy called IPTAS, which is a wonderful subsidy that helps provide money towards accommodation, also travel. And so for us, all those things coming together means that Homestay has a very unique niche. Many people have heard about other accommodation precincts that support various oncology. We have Western Care Lodge in Orange, which has done a wonderful job for many, many years. You've heard about Ronald McDonald House as well. But Macquarie Homestay is, I guess, Dubbo's version of all those things coming together to provide that patient accommodation. So what would be the furthest you've had someone travel to receive care here in Dubbo and stay at Macquarie Homestay? Yes. So we only had a gentleman catch the bus last week from Broken Hill and only for one night. So he was down one day, had his specialist appointment the next morning and caught the bus home the next day. So that's a big journey for someone to make. So certainly, Broken Hill to the west, we've had some patients come in from South West Queensland that have resided in sort of agricultural areas. And so in many ways, Dubbo is actually the sort of larger, closest center for them to travel to. But we've also had a handful of, I guess, grey nomads, folk that have been on the road. They've got their caravan, they're doing sort of that lifelong journey of wanting to travel and see all of the wonderful places that Australia has. And so some of those, unfortunately, they fall ill when they're away. It really does establish how important Dubbo is as sort of a medical base when it comes to providing care for a very wide region. How long ago was Macquarie Homestay established? So the concept of Homestay started July 2011 and we actually then progressed through that to actually open the first 17 units in January 2019. So we've now been open just over five years. And on a normal month, we see sort of over 140 or about 140 bookings a month, sort of 140 different patients each and every month. And some of those are only in for a single night. They can come down today, maybe do their specialist appointment today or first thing in the morning, go home the next day. But for some that are due to have a baby, then they may come down a week or two before Bob's due just so that mom's in a good place and then Bob's in a good place when delivery is ready to happen. And for some like dialysis, we've had a couple of patients that have stayed with us for six months. Stay there for a sec, Rod. Just want to take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll discuss what really the Stage 2 construction means for the Macquarie Homestay and what's the sort of money that's had to be pulled behind it. Quick break. Back in a sec. You're on ZOOFM Breakfast. It's ZOOFM Breakfast, your home of Dubbo's best music from the 80s to now right across the summer. We're speaking to Rod Crowfoot, the Managing Director for the Macquarie Homestay here in Dubbo about their Stage 2 construction, which is going to be the CWA Guest House. Now, I mean, what's your overall amount of patients compared to the overall capacity at the moment? So at the moment, we've got 17 units and sort of we're running sort of full over half of every month. And so we're knocking back people all the time. And for us, that's been the driver in needing to expand into Stage 2. In the last couple of years, we've seen the Western Cancer Center open and that's been a whole new treatment regime now provided in Dubbo that wasn't before. And there's a really big need to provide accommodation for all those patients coming particularly for radiotherapy when they're coming in for six weeks duration of treatment. And treatment is only for about 15 minutes a day. And so people go down for the treatment and then they'll come back and then, okay, then what do we do for the rest of the time? But it's too far to travel backwards and forwards and so they need somewhere to stay. And so many of those patients that are now having this really, really great treatment at the Cancer Center are staying with us for that four to six weeks in duration. Some may go home for a weekend early on, some will stay all the way through. But we've been able to design this next stage of accommodation to particularly support all the patients that are coming in for treatment at the Cancer Center. And then we've got a really nice mixture of one bed, two bed and family units. Some really great outdoor spaces as well. So we're really looking forward to having that finished at the end of this year. So what will your capacity be once this Stage 2 project is completed? So it'll be at 43 units and that's not the end for us. There's still another couple of stages we still need to work towards. Really, this next stage is really meeting just the current demand for an area of the hospital. What's the future stages plan? So we've got an area of five family units that we need to build. There's a lot of families that are coming down for all sorts of things. It can be pediatric ENT type surgeries for little people. It can be maternity. Mom and dad are coming down with the kids and need somewhere to stay. Maybe with grandma to look after them while they're having baby. For some treatments, they want to bring a larger family cohort to support them during their journey and so providing some family units is really important for us and then places for kids to be kids. They can go and play and do their things without impacting the other guests that are staying with us as well. There's another general area of just another 14 general units. So one and two bed units to support even more patients. We've got a big office and administration building to build to sort of help support all the clerical work that we do for patients with the rep test forms and different things. And then once we've got those completed, then we'll probably be able to let the dust settle a little. But the master planning does let us build another sort of 90 odd units further if we need to. But we just want to deal with what's in front of us for now and get that right and then we'll continue to work with our board and then sort of forward plan for what the community and what patients needs might exist into the future. It sounds like it's actually quite future-proof. There's quite a lot of planning there. There is and for us, we're very lucky that we have eight and a half acres on our block of land that we can grow into. And so having that strategic capability to morph and grow based on what our, I guess, the consumer, our customers, our patients needs will be. With Stage 2, what was the sort of the overall cost of the project and what's the funding sources for it? So we've been able to, I guess, break the funding of it into a few different areas. We've been particularly thankful for the many donations we've received over the number of years and that goes into providing a co-contribution towards the construction of this stage. Many organizations and individuals have taken up sponsorship of rooms and so with that, they get a number of naming rights on a room. They get a really nice plaque at the door recognizing their sponsorship and that helps furnish the room, provide the kitchenettes and the beds and the dining tables along with bits and pieces that feature through the room. We've been diligently applying for a variety of different grants from philanthropic through to charitable organizations as well as government organizations as well. So we've been successful with a number of different grants but in particular, the larger grant that we received was from the New South Wales government and it was a two or two and a half million dollars which really was a substantial kicker for us to be able to sort of commit to getting the project underway. And then the balance, we've taken on some debt with the bank and so that will then balance the rest of the bill. So all up this to actually, by the time we furnish it and everything else, it's going to be a little bit over eight million dollars. And so the funds that will be raised by Tour D'Horac this year sort of go into the kitty to help us sort of fund and bring that all together and hence why the timing of the tour in March this year is actually really, really timely and very appropriate for us too. Well, it sounds like an absolutely fantastic expansion for just a terrific service that you provide to patients traveling here for medical care. Absolutely. If anyone wants to jump online, you can go to macquariehomestay.com.au, jump on our socials and check us out there as well. We'd love for more people to know about that we exist and what we're all about. Cheers for coming in. Pleasure. You're on Zoozbracky!