POLICIES

PRIVACY POLICY

This practice is committed to Maintaining the confidentiality of your personal health information. Your medical records are confidential document. It is the policy of this practice to maintain security of personal health information at all time and to ensure that this information is only available to authorised members of staff. We abide by the ten national Privacy Principles available at www.privacy.gov.au/health/index.html.The Federal Privacy Commissioner- Privacy Hotline: 1300 363 992, GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2000

APPOINTMENTS

Please ring 07 3344 7880 for an appointment. A standard consultation is 10 to 15 minutes. If you need more time with the Doctor, you are welcome to request a longer appointment for around 20 to 25 minutes. Please inform our receptionists who are trained to assist you.
Please make an appointment for each family member.
Note: Emergencies medical situations will always be given priority, we will endeavour to inform you of any delay that may have occured

For walk in appointment: walk-in patient is triaged as appropriate and assessed using the Triage Support Guide and the criteria for suspected cases. Non-urgent walk-in patients are accepted if there is an available appointment, or scheduled when there is an appointment.

Telephone appointment- patient can book telehealth appointment, doctor will call patient on appointment time

CANCELLATION POLICY

We understand unplanned issues can arise, and you may need to cancel an appointment. Please inform reception about any changes or cancellation for your scheduled appointment at least 2 hours in advance to avoid the $20 cancellation fee.

When a patient does not show up for an apointment, other patients lose the opportunity to be seen.

FEES

Effective from 1st May 2023, our practice has transitioned to a mixed billing model due to the rising costs of running the practice and a lack of adequate Medicare funding. As a result, some patients may now have to pay a gap fee for their appointments. Please refer to the billing schedule below.

However, we are pleased to continue bulk billing for certain patient groups:

Children under 16 years old
Centrelink Health Care Card Holder
Commonwealth Seniors Card Holder
Pensioner Card Holder
DVA patients
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
Patients for Vaccine Only
Patients for GP management plan, GP Mental Health Care Plan, and Health Assessment

Note: Some services are not covered by Medicare schedule, and are privately billed and may attract a GST component, e.g. Insurance, Commercial driving test or Employment Medicals etc. Our reception staff can supply details of all private fees.

Overseas students and visitors.

For those who do not have a Medicare card, the scheduled fees as outlined below are payable at the time of consultation. There will be no Medicare rebate, however it may be claimable from your private health insurance.

BILLING SCHEDULE

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CARE OUTSIDE NORMAL OPENING HOURS ARRANGEMENTS

For Emergencies, please dial 000 or visit your nearest hospital emergency department
For after hour medical care, please contact National Home Doctor service 13 74 25.

HOME AND OTHER VISITS

We prefer to examine patients at the surgery where full diagnostic and treatment facilities are accessible. Home visits are only available for regular patients of this practice whose condition prevents them from attending the surgery.

PREVENTATIVE CARE AND PATIENT RECALL REMINDER SYSTEMS

We are committed to promoting and providing preventative strategies to protect your health. Therefore, we use a reminder system for alerting patients to upcoming or overdue activities, such as GP Management Plans, Team Care Arrangements, Health Assessments, skin check, cervical screening, blood test and so on. We use health engine to send you SMS reminder to your mobile phone from time to time offering you preventive health services appropriate to your care. If you don’t wish to be part of this system, please let your doctor or reception know.

INTERPRETER SERVICES

Free TIS (Translating and interpreting serves) phone services is available and can be pre-booked for your appointment if required.

PATHOLOGY AND INVESTIGATION RESULTS

For the best of your health, please make sure to book an appointment to review your result with your doctor.
All incoming pathology and radiology results and specialists’ letters are reviewed by the Doctors. It is recommended that you give us a call a few days after your test to check if your results have returned, and to make an appointment with your doctor to obtain the results and to plan follow-up care. Please note that our reception staff cannot provide a patient with medical results. You may receive a reminder for you to check your results via SMS from Health Engine.

REPEAT PRESCRIPTIONS

This practice does not prescribe S8 drugs (Controlled drugs) and drugs of addiction at the first visit. Repeat prescriptions will not be issued without a consultation with your doctor. It is important you be regularly reviewed while on medication to check for any possible side effects, and to review whether it is still the best medication for your condition.

REFERRALS

A consultation is required for all referrals so we can properly monitor your health and meet our ethical and legal responsibilities. This enables your doctor to compile an up-to-date medical history and other information about your condition which will help you get the most out of your appointment with the specialist.
A referral is a legal document that enables you to claim benefits from Medicare, so it is important that you obtain your referral before your specialist appointment. Please ensure your referral is organised well in advance before your specialist appointment as it is difficult to facilitate last-minute requests.

HANDLING FEEDBACK AND COMPLAINTS

Patient’s feedback is important to us in addressing problem areas and in achieving better service outcomes. We are interested in your suggestions and appreciate your input. Please be free to either speak to our staff, write us a letter, or fill in a patient feedback form and place it in the Suggestion Box in the waiting room if you have any ideas or a complaint. Please remember we are here to help you. We aim to work with you in caring for your health.

E communication policy

Electronic communication with patients must be conducted with appropriate regard to the privacy and confidentiality of the patient's health information.

Privacy and confidentiality training is provided as part of the new practice team members induction program; with regular updates and training provided every 6 month. It is the responsibility of the practice manager to ensure all training and training records is completed, current and stored in PracticeHub.

Managing telephone calls, telephone messages, and/or electronic messages

Effective handling of patient phone calls is important. To facilitate this, reception staff are trained to:

always gain permission from callers before placing them on hold. This gives the caller the opportunity to advise if they have an emergency.
use three approved forms of identification for identifying patients over the phone
rate the urgency of a call and manage as per the Triage Support Guide-refer Patient Triage (GP 1.1B)
advise the patient the process for responding to/returning their call on the day or in a reasonable timeframe.

All members of our practice team are aware of and have received training in the importance of documenting in the patient’s health record:

all attempts to contact the patient
all contacts from the patient
the reason for the contact, and
the information given by and to the patient.

Training provided also includes the information and advice practice team members can and cannot give to patients over the phone or electronically.

Telephone communication is an important communication tool for our practice.

Our procedure for managing incoming calls is:

answer within 2-3 rings
speak clearly and precisely with a smile in your voice
think about what you are saying and mean it
address the caller using their name
if placing the caller on hold, always ask whether their call is urgent, wait for the answer and if urgent continue with the call, or place on hold
when resuming the on-hold call, thank the caller for holding and continue with the call.

In our practice, the procedure for healthcare providers returning telephone calls is to schedule them between patients, during breaks or at the end of the day, at the healthcare providers discretion or book appointment with health providers. We maintain our patients’ privacy and confidentiality in telephone communication by:

transferring the call to a private area where the conversation cannot be overheard
not disclosing personal health information to anyone other than the patient. If an outside query is pursued, we refer the call to treatment room for our nurses or room 4 for our practice manager.

SMS and email communication

With appropriate authorisation our practice uses both SMS and email to communicate with our patients.

Management of email communication refer Core Standard 6 Information management, Email use (C6.4 F)

Authorisation for SMS contact requires:

patient signature in the appropriate section of our New Patient Registration form (scanned to patient file).
confirmation of mobile number at each visit.

The patient is informed the SMS:

does not to include sensitive health information (e.g., pathology results)
is included in their health record

Our practice SMS reminder system:

records the reminder in the patient file
allows the practice to access the record of the SMS reminders sent
the practice has access to the patient to the SMS reminders
the practice can identify an SMS reminder sent to a patient for a flagged recall or reminder and the response from the patient to ensure appropriate action is taken or when there is no responses by the patient
if there is no responses after 3 sms or calls, a letter will be sent to patient.