The Skin Institute has the Deep South Wrapped Up

You Little Beauty: The Skin Institute has the Deep South Wrapped Up

If you thought facelifts, skin peels and Botox® were an Auckland thing, think again.

The Skin Institute’s investment in the new, improved Dunedin premises complete a quartet of clinics in the Deep South where appearance medicine treatments are all the rage.

Up until recently Dunedin couldn’t match Queenstown, Invercargill and Alexandra for appearance work so the Skin Institute invested in a new purpose-designed clinic at 7A York Place – just down the road from the city’s famous Octagon and perfectly placed for people out on a day’s shopping spree to call in and find out what the fuss is all about.

The man leading the new clinic, Dr Hans Raetz, is the founder of ClinicQT – the first appearance medicine clinic in Otago and Southland – and he says that the Skin Institute is responding to what its Dunedin customers have been asking for.

“We had so many requests for appearance medicine services, so we wanted to provide a much broader service,” he says.

Suzy Aitken, who is the clinic manager and clinical nurse leader at Queenstown, travels the 3.5 hours down from Queenstown to provide the appearance medicine services such as Botox® and fillers.

Dr Raetz said the appearance work is so successful he’s already looking to recruit an appearance medicine nurse to work three days a week in the new premises.

The full Skin Institute service on offer also includes skin cancer checks and surgery, for which Dr Raetz also travels from Queenstown.

“It’s good that the Skin Institute name is pushing out and getting advertised out of Auckland because there’s a demand for our skin cancer and our appearance medicine work. And we’ve got it sorted down here with Queenstown, Dunedin and Invercargill – the only place missing is Christchurch.”

The new Dunedin clinic has seen a demand for skin cancer checks and surgery right from its opening.

“We’ve also had a steady stream of skin checks and skin cancer checks.

Originally we decided the clinic wouldn’t offer them, but there’s so much demand that we decided we would run a trial. Now I think we will train someone up to take over from me because there’s been such a demand.”

“We have got a full theatre service set up in Dunedin now with a theatre nurse, sonographer and phlebologist Dr James McCormick from the local hospital for the vein work, so we spend one day a week just doing surgery,” Dr Raetz says.

“It’s definitely on a growth burst from the day we started in the new building. In a month and a half we’ve easily done what we used to do in three months – and that’s just from opening the doors.”

As well as the skin cancer services and appearance medicine, new Beauty Therapist, Juliet Hanifin is also attracting customers for her treatments, which includes skin peels, facials and microdermabrasion. She works four days a week (Wednesday is reserved for a full day of theatre surgery) and is already very busy after just one month in the new building.

Moving into a new building has also meant the team has been able to build a theatre and clinic specifically tailored to their requirements. The clinic will gain day surgery DAA accreditation from May. The Skin Institute is an Affiliated Provider to Southern Cross Health society, for selected vein treatments where medical necessity criteria applies. The Skin Institute will process prior approval requests and claims directly for Southern Cross members.

The Skin Institute’s York Place clinic in Dunedin also offers parking for customers and, because it’s just off the Octagon in the centre of the city, is easy to reach if you’ve headed into the CBD for a spot of shopping.

“The door’s always open for people to just walk in off the street – which they seem to be doing a lot already! It’s a high-visibility clinic which will make all the difference in Dunedin.”
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