Telehealth and Coronavirus Update - 23/4/20

Given the changing nature of the coronavirus pandemic, we now offer Telehealth appointments to all of our patients. We will book a time with your doctor and they will call you for a phone consult. If you meet Medicare’s criteria for being bulk-billed for a phone consult, there will be no out of pocket cost to you. For our private patients that do not meet Medicare’s criteria for being bulk-billed, there may be private fees associated with these consults. For more information about our fees and Medicare’s criteria for being bulk-billed, please click here.

At this time, we are attempting to look after our patients via Telehealth as much as we can and where it is appropriate to do so. This will now include the follow-up of test results. To receive your test results, please call us and our reception team will make a time for your doctor to call you to discuss your results further.

We want to reassure you that we are taking your health seriously. We have now implemented a number of changes at our practices to ensure we do all that we can to reduce the spread of diseases at our practices.

We now have a “Red Zone” set up at our reception counters that are marked out in red tape on the floor – when you arrive at the practice, we ask you to please not enter the Red Zone. When you approach the counter after your consult, we ask you to please stand behind our screens at our reception counters.
When you arrive at our practices, we encourage you to please use our hand sanitiser that is provided at our entrances.
In order to maintain social distancing, we have removed chairs from our waiting rooms and have placed chairs outside for patients who would prefer to wait outside. If you would prefer to wait in your car for your doctor, we will be more than happy to facilitate this for you, you will just need to give us a call when you arrive in the carpark
We have removed all toys and magazines from our waiting rooms as these items can be a source of virus transmission. We have also removed our Self Check-In Kiosks from our waiting rooms. We apologise for any inconvenience.
We have now changed our Online Bookings so that patients can book a telehealth appointment with their doctor. Instructions about Telehealth appointment bookings can be found on our website.
We are now asking all patients to pay via card where possible. We will not be processing rebates via our Easy Claim function, but instead Medicare will deposit the rebate back into your bank account. For patients that would like to pay cash, at this time we ask that you have the correct amount for us to limit cash handling.

We have also changed some of our procedures, including how we manage potentially infectious patients. If you have:

Cold or flu-like symptoms including a fever, cough, fatigue, runny nose, sore throat and shortness of breath we ask you to please not enter our practices.
Travelled overseas or interstate in the past 14 days, we ask you to please not enter our practices.
Been in contact with a confirmed or suspected case of Coronavirus, we ask you to please not enter our practices.

You will receive a phone consult with your doctor or another doctor at our practice to determine the appropriate actions to be taken.

Our staff are working very hard to look after our patients and our team. During this challenging time, please be considerate towards everyone at our practices, and please follow the directions that our staff and doctors give you. Please be aware that we will not tolerate patients that do not follow our instructions or abuse our staff members.

For more information about Coronavirus, please click on the link below which will take you to Australia’s current Coronavirus (COVID-19) health alert:

https://www.health.gov.au/news/health-alerts/novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov-health-alert

We thank you for your assistance in trying to keep you, all of our patients and our team safe during this time.