Our aim is to facilitate effective communication between the practice and our patients, to ensure:

1. You can contact the practice when you need to

2. You can make appointments and receive other information in a timely manner

3. Urgent enquiries are dealt with in a timely and medically appropriate way.

 Correctly identifying the caller

It is important for us to protect your privacy. Therefore, you may be asked approved patient identifiers such as :

• Family and given names

• Date of Birth

• Address

• Gender

Communicating by Phone:

Our receptionist will contactable during business hours 8.30am -5.30 pm, but the phones may be switched to lunch mode for 30minutes during lunch break.

When you care unable to reach the receptionist, we have an online booking system to facilitate making appointments online. This platform is securely managed by the third party Automed Systems. Their affiliated app – AMS Connect App will also enable you to make, cancel and change your appointment as well as check in on arrival.

The practice has adopted a telephony tool called Caller ID, which is integrated with the practice appointment software. Using the phone number the call is made from, the tool can identify the caller, and bring up data listed with that number, including your name and appointment history details.

Your call is important to us, and we understand the nature of all calls are not the same. We ask you select from phone options by selecting

• option 1 for appointments

• option 2 general enquiries.

Receptionist use a triage guide to determine which calls are urgent or an emergency before placing the call on hold. At times, they may seek further information from you to determine the best course of action. If your call is of clinical nature, a message will be taken for our practice nurse or clinical team to answer your enquiry.

In non urgent situations, requests to speak with the doctor will not be generally put through at the time of the call. A message will be taken and sent to the doctor via the integrated practice management software. The doctor will return the call when time permits or when rostered to work.

Telehealth

It is a legislative requirement for health practitioners eligible to claim tele-health items for patients:

• patients with an existing relationship

• who’ve visited the practice for a face-to –face service in the last 12months

Some exemptions to this rule are if a patient is:

• in isolation or quarantine for COVID-19 due to a state or territory public health order

• experiencing homelessness

• under 12 months of age

• needing mental health support

For the full list of  exemptions see https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/who-can-claim-telehealth-services-under-mbs-or-dva?context=20

 Email

Using email to communicate with the practice is NOT a secure form of communication. Whilst we make every effort to handle your personal information carefully, patients need to be aware of the risks associated with electronic communication such as the information being accessed by someone other than the intended recipient.

To contact the practice by email, please use reception.rfp@gmail.com  In sending a email, consent is implied for the practice to reply.

Emails are received by the reception team and your message will be triaged to the relevant clinical team member. Emails are checked throughout the day, but are constantly monitored. We endeavour to reply to eAs mail messages within 1-3 business days.  We urge you contact the clinic by phone for urgent matters instead.

The practice uses an integrated platform within the software to generate an encrypted email to send you e-prescriptions, referral letters and results. Please do not reply to this email address, as it is not monitored.

SMS

Integrated within the online booking system software, the practice will use SMS messages for health management contact.

These may include:

• Appointment reminders

• Recalls on results

• Reminders for health checks

• Health promotion messages from time to time.

You may opt out of any one or all of these by contacting the reception team.

Post and fax

Letters or faxes received by the clinic are reviewed and actioned by the clinical team and then stored in the patient record.