There are several factors here. The main one is to ensure the doctor is able to adequately and thoroughly address your health care concerns in the allocated time. A standard 15-minute appointment is usually for one area of concern, sometimes two if it includes a routine script renewal. A new Mental Health Care plan alone requires a 30-minute appointment. 15 minutes is not adequate time to address all those needs to the standard that the doctors conduct their sessions to. Secondly, to avoid the doctors running late.  Doctors respect our patient’s time and try to run on time. We request that you reciprocate and respect your doctor’s time, by booking the adequate appointment length and respect our doctors if they ask you to re-book another appointment.

Yes.

Registered patients of the clinic will receive SMS reminders of their appointments. This is sent out the day before the appointment. Please respond to the message to indicate your confirmation of attendance. Unconfirmed appointments may be cancelled. If you do not wish to receive reminder SMS messages for appointments, please advise the reception staff.

The doctors run by an appointment system. If you wish to speak with a GP you need to book an appointment. The doctors only work certain session times and are only available when they are here for a session.

It is an unfortunate reality of appointment-based systems that doctors can sometimes run behind. They prefer not to and do what they can to remain on time. There are occasions when patients present for a standard 15-minute appointment and require more time with the doctor than what had been scheduled. Some patients may need continuous monitoring, or extension of time with the doctor if deemed necessary and is in the best interest of the patient at that time. These situations are not something that the clinic or Doctors are able to plan for and require management on the day which may influence the time you get seen.

We bulk bill patients with a current Aged or Disability Pension Card and children of Health Care Card holders. You will need to present a valid card at the time of your appointment and it will need to meet Concessional Entitlement checks with Service Australia. We privately bill all other patients with a concessional rate available for Health Care Card Holders and other Pension cards including JobSeeker, Carer Payment, Youth Allowance and Parenting Payment.
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Please be aware we  do not bulk bill on Saturdays. Bulk Billing is also up to the discretion of each individual doctor. 

As part of you engaging the services at Northside Clinic, it is your responsibility to ensure you are aware of any fees for services. Please ensure you consult our fees policy here so you are aware of your obligations of payment, prior to your appointments.

Telehealth appointments are treated the same as in clinic appointments and sometimes the doctor can run late.  If they are unable to call at the booked time, they will call you and you need to be available for that call, just as you would need to wait in the waiting room if you were attending in person. Please be mindful of this when booking your telehealth appointments during work times. We highly recommend that you do not book a telehealth appointment if you are restricted to your lunch break.

Yes. Telehealth appointments are treated the same as in clinic appointments. If you do not answer the doctor’s call, it will be treated as a missed appointment with a missed appointment fee. Our doctors usually try to call you several times before moving on to the next booked patient.

Telehealth appointments are treated the same as in clinic appointments. If you do not answer the calls from the clinic, they will move on to their next booked patient.  They will have other patients booked for the remainder of their session time and are not always able to call you back outside of their session times.

We have a robust system in place to recover unpaid patient accounts. You would have been sent invoices via email and sms asking you to contact the clinic to make payment for your outstanding account. We respectfully request that you pay for services you receive on the day of your appointment, to avoid being unable to make appointments or not able to attend the clinic.

Yes, you can cancel your appointment with the GP without any charge up to 2 hours before your appointment time. Late cancellation within 2 hours of the appointment time may incur a fee and failure to attend your appointment may also incur a fee.

The doctors run by an appointment system that allows them to allocate a certain amount of time to each patient.  We will check with your GP, however if you miss your appointment time, you may have missed your appointment and will need to reschedule.  You will also receive a missed appointment fee.