We believe in and endeavour to deliver high quality health care to each individual clients.
In order to provide such care, we carefully balance the needs and the affordability of each case.
We are now a private billing practice. We have made the transition to private billing to ensure the continued sustainability of our practice. The massive imbalance between the value of the Medicare rebate and our actual operational costs, resulted in us no longer operating a viable business.
We offer staged costs for our consults:
- Onsite doctor/s have the highest out of pocket cost;
- Telehealth doctors with a comparably lower out of pocket cost;
- A Nurse Practitioner available for consults with the smallest out of pocket gap
We have been fortunate enough to recruit a very experienced nurse practitioner with a spectacular skillset. A Nurse Practitioner (NP) is a nurse who has extra training and is capable of prescribing and referring. It is thanks to our NP that we can continue to offer reduced cost consults. During this visit she will assess your problems, and create a management plan. If she has any concerns about your care or needs further support, she will involve a GP. When the doctor contributes during the same visit there will be no further out of pocket fee. This allows your doctor to continue to be involved in your regular care, supports our NP to grow her skill and confidence and finally offers a lower cost option to patients.
We continue to encourage you to book 6 monthly visits with a doctor for periodic review. There will be some things that our NP will not be able to do but our doctor team will support these gaps. The collaboration of GP’s and NP will hopefully allow us to accommodate many more patients, even in the face of limited doctor numbers.
We will continue to offer bulk billed health assessments and GP Management Plans, however, there are strict criteria around these appointments that must be met for us to offer this. We will provide more information about this in leaflets at our counter. There are several other ‘no gap’ services we provide which will be discussed separately.
Unfortunately, we can no longer sustain the offer of reduced fees for concession cards and pensioners, however we encourage patients to access the ‘extended Medicare Safety Net’. More information about the Medicare Safety Net can be found here.
What Services will be Bulk Billed?
The following consultations will continue to be bulk billed for eligible patients.
- Chronic Disease Management Plans
- Health assessments
- Flu vaccination clinics
- Routine childhood vaccinations
- Wound Reviews
For more information about our decision to transition to a private billing practice see the video below or click here
For more information about the services that can be bulk billed click here
Have you registered for MyMedicare?
MyMedicare is a voluntary patient registration system that aims to formalise the relationship between patients, their general practice, general practitioner (GP) and primary care teams. This was introduced in October 2023.
By registering as a patient of your chosen general practice and selecting a preferred GP, additional funding will be available from the government to assist your chosen general practice to deliver the care you need.
By registering in MyMedicare, you may benefit from:
- The option to bulkbill certain consults for healthcare-card holders or pensioners (that are registered patients) in their chosen clinic.
- Via Increased bulkbilling incentive payments and some other background support payments from the government.
- Access to a higher rebate for long phone consults
- In November 2023, the long phone consult Medicare code was removed. To access a rebate for a long phone consultation a MyMedicare registration needs to be in place.
- This is particularly important for those of you who use our telehealth service.
- Extra support for those patients that are deemed at risk of hospitalisation.
It is voluntary and free to register in MyMedicare, and registration is open to Australians with a Medicare card or Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) Veteran Card.
Find out more by visiting: www.health.gov.au/our-work/mymedicare/patients
Or chat to our friendly team who can assist you during your registration process.