Frequently Asked Questions
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The aim of this practice is to keep appointments running to schedule. However, priority will be given to urgent cases when necessary and this may cause delays.
Being late is annoying for patients and stressful for staff and doctors. Quite often our consultations can run over time. Just 4 minutes extra per consultation means that the doctor is 1 hour late at the end of the session. You can assist us by the following:
- If you require a longer appointment advise the receptionist at the time of booking and a longer appointment time will be allocated.
- Being understanding if the doctor suggests you come back to address remaining issues.
- Understanding that a "fit in" or "brief" appointment is for really urgent / can't wait conditions on the day, and that the doctor will only deal with that urgent problem.
Reception staff will inform you where possible of any delay when you arrive.
If you have multiple issues to discuss with your doctor, it is best to book in for a long consultation. This will allow the doctor to spend adequate time with you to discuss your multiple issues. If you are booked in for only a standard appointment, your doctor may enquire of the nature of each of the issues, triage the issues and address those of highest urgency first. Your doctor may ask you to book another appointment in a suitable time frame to address the remaining issues.
There is a cancellation fee of $25.00 for appointments not cancelled with an adequate advanced notice (charged at the discretion of individual doctors).
We encourage patients to notify us if they are unable to attend an appointment - this enables us to offer the appointment to another patient.
We only disclose your clinical information to yourself or another practitioner who may be involved in your treatment for a specific reason (eg. Specialists you have been referred to).
If you wish to authorise a specific family member or contact person to call on your behalf and discuss clinical information about you (including pathology and radiology test results) please fill out our Clinical Information Consent Form and return it to either our Marden or Newton Surgery.
We are always on the lookout to add to our team individuals who share our values and ideals.
If you would like to be a doctor, nurse or receptionist in our team we encourage you to send us your CV to recruitment@eahc.com.au
Preliminary Application Questions for Job Applicants:
We appreciate any feedback that you may have about our practices and our services.
If you would like to share your feedback with us, you can email us at feedback@eahc.com.au.
Alternatively, you may prefer to share your feedback with your practitioner, our practice manager or our reception team. If you have any feedback that you would like to pass onto us, please give us a call or visit one of our surgeries:
Ph: 8230 6900 - Marden.
Ph: 8360 9777 - Newton
When your account is paid in full you will receive a $15 discount off the gap payment. You will also receive the medicare rebate from Medicare directly.
To collect your rebate we can:
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Instantaneously refund your rebate onto your Savings or Cheque card via our Tyro Payments System (meaning you dont have to wait to get your rebate back).
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Send the account to Medicare online and if they have your bank account details they will deposit the rebate directly into your bank account (usually within 48 hours). To register your bank details with Medicare click here.
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Send the account to Medicare online and they will send you a cheque in the mail.
East Adelaide Healthcare provides home visits where possible by arrangement with the doctors. Please ask a receptionist in the first instance to arrange a time for a visit.
If a home visit is determined to not be safe or reasonable, we will suggest an alternative source of care that you can access depending on your circumstances.
Our practice provides health services to a diverse and multicultural population, including people with disability and those from non-English-speaking backgrounds (NESB). We recommend NESB patients use a professional interpreter service to assist them during consultations.
You may wish to enlist a translator who is a family member or friend, however we discourage children from translating on their parent's behalf. In some cases, having a family member or friend translate is also not appropriate, for the following important reasons:
- Sometimes you may be reluctant to disclose information to someone you know.
- A relative or friend may inadvertently or deliberately relay biased translation of information.
Our practice is committed to ensuring patients with limited English or are deaf or have loss of hearing, are provided with interpreting and other communication services to assist them to communicate with and understand information and recommendations provided by the doctor and/or clinical team members.
Our practice also encourages patients with minimal English proficiency to request for language assistance, to ensure any communication barriers are overcome and we meet the needs and deliver the highest quality service to our patients.
We use the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS). This is a free service, available 24 hours a day by phone at the time of consultation or with 48 hours’ notice, onsite at our practice. TIS can be contacted on 131 450.
When a patient comes to East Adelaide Healthcare for the first time, your Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) number is automatically imported into your file (our doctors use this for electronic prescribing and for accessing My Health Record information in our Clinical software). If you have a My Health Record and have notifictions enabled, you will receive a notification to say 'East Adelaide Healthcare accessed your My Health Record for the first time’.
From this point onwards, each time your file is accessed by our doctors, you will see in your My Health Record Access History that East Adelaide Healthcare has attempted to 'retrieve all documents, medications, pathology and diagnostic results.' This is a normal process of our Clinical software so you do not need to treat it as suspicious.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to call East Adelaide Healthcare on 8230 6900.
East Adelaide Healthcare welcomes new patients. Normally the initial consult will be longer than a normal appointment.
If you are a new patient we require you to fill out a New Patient Information form. You can download and complete the New Patient Information form and return it to us electronically prior to your appointment. Please send it to our email address: telehealth@eahc.com.au.
If you are unable to send your form to us electronically, please arrive 15 minutes prior to your appointment and bring the form with you. If you are unable to download the form, please arrive 20 minutes prior to your appointment and we can provide you with the New Patient Information form.
A Transfer of Records form can also be printed and filled out. This can be given to a receptionist at either surgery and they will forward to your previous GP.
At any time you are welcome to obtain a New Patient Information Kit from reception staff at either surgery. This kit will have our new patient information forms, transfer or records form, brochures, doctors' information and our latest newsletters.
There is a 'non-attendance / cancellation fee' of $45 for a single appointment and $70 for a double appointment for new patient appointments not cancelled with an adequate advanced notice.
We encourage patients to notify us if they are unable to attend an appointment - this enables us to offer the appointment to another patient.
East Adelaide Healthcare provides pathology services at both the Marden and Newton Surgeries via Clinpath.
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The hours for pathology collection are: Marden Surgery:
Newton Surgery:
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The reception and nursing staff at East Adelaide Healthcare are here to provide a service of excellence to all patients.
East Adelaide Healthcare will not accept any form of abuse directed at staff or doctors. Our practitioners will not tolerate this behaviour and will not continue to provide services to patients if it is found that their behaviour has been unacceptable.
Every patient's medical history is treated confidentially. However, at times relevant patient information may be passed on to another practitioner who is involved in that patient's care.
Your medical record is a confidential document. It is the policy of this practice to maintain security of personal health information at all times and to ensure that this information is only available to authorised members of staff.
We are a teaching practice and will on occasion have medical and nursing students observing consultations. As a patient, you will be required to authorise the presence of any student. This may be done verbally prior to the consultation. If you do not wish to have them involved in your consultation, please tell the receptionist. We will be happy to respect your privacy.
If you require a referral to a specialist, you need to make an appointment to see your doctor prior to visiting the specialist. Practice policy is that new referrals will not be provided to patients without consultation with a GP. Repeat referrals are the discretion of the practitioner.
Please note: it is illegal for any doctor to backdate a referral to a specialist. All referrals must be requested prior to your specialist appointment.
We are pleased to announce that here at East Adelaide Healthcare we are now offering secure electronic health reminders to our patients.
Our doctors put health reminders in your file to help manage your health. These reminders may involve having a test, an injection or a review. In the past, these reminders were posted out to you.
We now have the ability to send these reminders to your phone as a secure SMS. The message will come to your phone, and you will be able to click on the link to view what your health reminder is about.
What you need to do:
- When you receive an SMS health reminder, you will need to enter your Date of Birth and Surname to view it. This is to protect your privacy.
- Read the message and action the health reminder e.g. book an appointment online or call our practice to book if that is what is required.
- If you are not set up to receive SMSs from EAHC and would like to start receiving them, please speak to our reception staff.
- If you would like to stop receiving SMSs from EAHC, please speak to our reception staff. Please note, if you do opt out of SMSs, you will no longer receive appointment reminders via SMS.
This is what your health reminder will look like:
A brief appointment is required for all prescriptions (including repeat prescriptions). This appointment will be for the review and issue of the prescription. It is individual practitioner preference whether they will issue you a repeat prescription without a consultation.
For regular medications, we encourage you to ensure you have a sufficient number of repeat prescriptions before leaving the surgery, to ensure continuity of medication until your next visit.
Please fill out our Specialist New Patient Information Form below before your appointment and email it back to us on telehealth@eahc.com.au.
The doctors will take urgent phone calls and non urgent phone calls if they are free at that time.
If the doctor is unavailable, they will try to return your call when they are available.
Alternatively, you may speak to one of our registered nurses if it is an issue that they may be able to help you with.
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. Please note, as we are a private billing practice, there may be a fee for a consult regarding your results.