HOME, HOSPITAL AND NURSING HOME VISITS

Visits to patients at home, in Hospital & Nursing Homes may be arranged through your regular treating doctor.

Home Visits. Where safe and reasonable, our practice provides home and aged/residential care visits to regular practice patients who live within the Gatton township or a 3km radius of our practice. Home visits are available to patients who are unable to present to the clinic due to mobility problems, acute illness, and severe disability or in the final stages of a terminal illness. Patients will be advised of the cost of a home visit upon request.

TEST RESULTS

We encourage you to call between 1pm and 4pm for results. We do have a recall system but we encourage you to contact the surgery if you are concerned or have not been contacted about your results.

Test results, once viewed by the Doctors, are available from reception or the nurses. Our staff will be able to advise you of normal results or advise if a further appointment has been requested by your doctor to discuss your results with you.

It is your responsibility to ensure you follow-up test results, particularly when practice staff or your doctor stress that you do this. Ask reception staff about the best way to go about it.

INDIGENOUS HEALTH

We are a Medicare registered practice for the Closing the Gap Program. A government initiative to tackle chronic disease within the Indigenous population.

TELEPHONE CALLS

Our Doctors have requested that they not be interrupted during a consultation with non-urgent telephone calls. If the receptionists or the nurses can not help you with your inquiry a message can be taken for your Doctor.

REMINDER SYSTEMS

Gatton Medical Centre participates in National & State reminder systems, e.g. for pap smears, immunisations and other tests and follow-up as deemed necessary by our Doctors. Please advise your Doctor if you do not wish to participate in these schemes.

REFERRALS TO SPECIALISTS

The backdating of referrals is illegal and subject to a substantial fine for the Doctor who backdates a referral. It is a Medicare requirement that referrals can only be written during the course of a consultation. Substantial penalties apply for any General Practitioner convicted of writing referrals outside of a consultation. You are able to consult a specialist without a referral, however, you will be unable to claim a full rebate from Medicare.

It is important to note that visiting a specialist will often incur out of pocket charges. Costs associated with visiting specialists vary. We recommend you inquire about out of pocket charges when you make appointments with specialist’s rooms.

HOW TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT

To make an appointment at Gatton Medical Practice, please dial 07 5462 1855 If you are experiencing a medical emergency please dial 000.

Gatton Medical Practice is open Monday to Saturday by appointment. We are located at 15 William St, Gatton QLD 4343. We open our telephone lines from 8 am Monday to Friday, and 8:30 am on Saturdays. Gatton Medical Practice is closed on Sundays & Public Holidays.

COMMUNICATION / TRANSLATION

Should you require alternative modes of communication during your appointment e.g. Translator interpreter services (TIS), National Relay Services (NRS) please advise our Reception staff at the time of booking so arrangements can be made.

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR APPOINTMENT

At Gatton Medical Practice our standard appointment time is 10 minutes. Extra time is required for medicals, counselling, excisions or multiple problems etc. Please advise Reception when making an appointment if extra time may be needed, please also note a nurse may be required for some services, please let reception know as this needs to be booked in conjunction with your doctors appointment. In this way we are better able to reduce waiting times. Reception staff may also need to ask you questions to ensure your medical needs are being met in a timely manner. This is part of our triage process and is not meant to be intrusive. If reception staff require further clinical assistance we will transfer you through to the duty nurse.

Our surgery will make every effort to give you an appointment with the doctor of your choice, however, this may not always be possible. In these cases, our staff will endeavour to give you an appointment with another doctor within the Practice.

At each visit we will check your personal details, this is to ensure the accuracy of your patient information e.g. your name, address, date of birth and best contact number. You may be a long-standing patient of the doctor but it is our legal responsibility.