Dr Gurdeep ‒ blurring the lines between health and beauty

14 September, 2021

Dr Gurdeep, the owner of three medical centres on Australia’s east coast, is leading the way in treating health AND beauty concerns ‘under the one roof’.

Dr Gurdeep Bagari’s life running three medical centres in NSW today is a far cry from his life saving soldiers’ lives on battlefields just ten years ago.

Yet, despite the glaring differences, Dr Gurdeep is adamant many of the skills he developed “as a lone doctor caring for a battalion of 1000 soldiers” have helped him care for 1000s of patients fighting their own individual health battles.

Dr Gurdeep is the proud owner of the Narooma Medical Centre, the Tuross Head Medical Centre, and the Forum Medical Centre and Skin Clinic in inner-city Leichhardt.

In addition to general medical and specialist services, all three centres offer an extensive list of aesthetic treatments.

Finding the right spot

Dr Gurdeep, who arrived in Australia from India in 2012, worked as a GP in a Townsville skin cancer clinic before opening his first medical centre in 2016.

Searching for “a location that wasn’t far from Sydney” where his sister lives, Dr Gurdeep opted for Narooma, around 300km south of the capital, as he immediately recognised the region’s “lack of services”.

“I took over the Wagonga Street Medical Centre ‒ a very small, two consult room clinic that was available ‒ but within one year I knew that it wasn’t sufficient for me,” he recalls.

“I had to grow it, so I took over a space that was available in a nearby shopping centre and then within six months expanded it from four consult rooms to eight consult rooms.”

Today, the Narooma Medical Centre has 14 consult rooms, an operating room, a dressing room and a pathology room, and offers an extensive range of allied health services including Dr Gurdeep’s new ‘MySkinGP’ aesthetic services.

Although recent, Dr Gurdeep’s move into the aesthetic space is a natural progression for the clinic, which was built on a ‘holistic’ ethos.

“We want our patients to feel that we are not only taking care of their health but their general wellbeing too,” he explains, emphasising that looking good is critical to most people’s wellbeing.

Healthy Beauty

Dr Gurdeep and his team currently offer a wide range of aesthetic treatments under the MySkinGP brand including anti-wrinkle injections, fillers, thread lifts, skin rejuvenation with the Venus Viva and Venus Versa, and PRP therapy.

Dr Gurdeep stresses that the integration of such aesthetic treatments within the Narooma Medical Centre is the key to success for both parts of his business – and the patients as well.

“If a person comes to see me for their skin concern, I’ll not only treat their skin concern related to dermatology, but if there is skin cancer, I’ll treat that also, and if they’re concerned about loose skin, I’ll treat that too.

“I can address all their medical and aesthetic concerns under one roof.”

Dr Gurdeep believes that the lack of communication between medical and aesthetic practitioners in the general community is often to the detriment of patients as their services are so closely related.

Fine lines

“There is often an exceptionally fine line between an aesthetic treatment and a medical treatment.

“Some things that are considered aesthetic treatments may also be medical treatments.

“For example, if a person is seeing a nurse injector, the nurse may not be in a position to tell the patient anything about their actual skin condition (eg, skin cancer, acne and dermatitis) or identify the cause of their concerns (there can be medical reasons for sagging skin or skin being too elastic).

“A GP is in a much better position to do both…”

Dr Gurdeep, therefore, encourages other doctors to follow his lead and incorporate aesthetic services in their practices – for the benefit of their businesses and their patients.

He says doctors need to think about their patients and their needs with a more “open mind” and not dismiss aesthetic treatments as trivial.

“I would like to push for a holistic approach to the whole person across the entire medical community.

“Don’t look at a person like a single disease or just a patient. Look at the person like a whole person with a medico-psycho-social approach.

“One person is not the same as another person. Their health concerns are not their only concerns.”

He stresses that MySkinGP is “not just about beauty”.

“All the services help our patients feel good about themselves in their health, in their mind, in their body and in their soul.”

Dr Gurdeep is now busy replicating his success at the Narooma Medical Centre at his Tuross Head and Leichhardt centres ‒ and planning the opening of three more (in Bega, Gerringong and Gunghalin) in February.

“There is a large unmet need for aesthetics services across Australia,” he says.

“The way that I look at it, the market has not even been tapped yet.