General Information
Consultations are by appointment. This helps us manage doctors’ time efficiently and reduce waiting time.
Please let reception staff know your usual doctor so that they can make an appointment with your doctor when you call. If your usual doctor is unavailable on a particular day, we encourage you to see one of our other doctors who is familiar with your medical history. Patients at our practice are allocated 2 long-term doctors, to ensure continuity of care, a high quality comprehensive medical assessment, and so you always have a familiar friendly person to listen to your concerns.
Appointments are usually 15 minutes for a single problem. If you feel you require a longer appointment of 30 or 45 minutes for 2 or more problems or for complex issues, please book a longer appointment with our reception staff when making your appointment.
Urgent & Emergency Care
We try to accommodate patients who become seriously ill – please let us know the urgent nature of your symptoms when you call to make an appointment.
In a life-threatening emergency, please telephone ‘000’ directly, so an ambulance may attend as soon as possible.
Cancellations
Please let us know if your appointment is no longer required so we can offer it to other patients who may be unwell or require urgent review.
Missed appointments may incur a $50 'failure-to-attend' fee, which is not rebateable.
Online Appointment Bookings
Online appointment bookings are available. Please click on the link button on the right of this page or any of our other website pages to make an online appointment.
If there is any change, to this, our receptionist will contact you (as soon as possible by telephone, SMS, or email) to confirm the doctor, time, date, and the length of appointment.
Longer appointments of 30 minutes are required for the following:
- New patients
- Annual health checks
- Pap smears
- Travel advice & vaccination
- Mental health care plans
- Workcover assessments
- Medical & insurance forms
- Minor procedures & excisions
For current patients of this practice, it is also possible to book Video Medical Consultations Online. Please read the relevant information for these under the 'Services' tab, before making a booking.
Why Choose Balmoral
Medical Practice
Our doctors are highly trained, broadly experienced, and very good listeners
We offer long consultations to reach
more accurate diagnosesWe look after multiple generations
in each familyOn-site pathology provided by
Douglass Hanly Moir PathologyWe don't keep
patients waitingWe have a higher level of urgent resuscitation experience
There are 22 free customer parking spaces in our rear car park. From your car space, it's a level 10 metre walk through the arcade to our front door.
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Recalls & Reminders
We send you an SMS via our online system called HotDoc to remind you when a test or service is due. We do this routinely for Pap smears, blood tests, blood pressure reviews, annual health checks and childhood vaccinations.
Please let us know if you change your email or postal address.
FAQs
Most consultations are by appointment to avoid keeping patients waiting. Should you attend without an appointment, we do our best to meet your needs, without delaying other pre-booked patients.
A standard appointment is 15 minutes to address a single query. If you have more than one query or the matter is complicated, or you are a new patient with a medical history unknown to us, you should book a longer 30 minute appointment. Patients who attend with long lists of queries, should expect to have these resolved over several appointments, so we don’t keep other patients waiting.
Our fees and your out-of pocket costs (listed on this website), are based on how much time the consultation takes to resolve your query. As a general rule Medicare reimburses 40-50% of the fee, however as soon as patients reach their Medicare Threshold, Medicare reimburses 85-90% of the consultation fee. We do our best to get the maximum reimbursement from Medicare paid back to you on the day.
You may call reception to book a telephone or online video consultation with your doctor. You will be asked whether it is a standard or long consultation, and billed accordingly on a time basis. Online video consultations may be booked on this website from the privacy of your home computer or office by clicking here. This practice uses ‘skype’ or 'zoom' software for video consultations, which may be downloaded free from the internet.
Our fees are the same for telephone & video consultations, and since 2020 onwards, all telehealth consultations receive the equivalent medicare rebate to a face-to-face consult. Please note, that after you hang up, your doctor still has to do the paperwork, scripts, referrals, or medical notes normally required, and this time is counted as part of your telehealth consultation, in the same way, as your doctor does these for you, when you attend face-to-face.
Our GP's do not accept emails requesting clinical advice, because they can not ask relevant diagnostic questions, to safely respond. Our policy is for our receptionist to book a face-to-face consultation or book a telephone or video consultation instead. Administrative questions may be emailed to the reception team from the 'Contact Us' page on this website. and are generally addressed within 48-72 hours. There is no fee for this service. For any urgent clinical or administrative query, we recommend you telephone our reception team to resolve the matter.
If this is a specialist you have been referred to by one of our Doctors before, you need a short telephone appointment for this type of request. The fee is $70, with an out of pocket cost after Medicare of $27.15, so long as that is the only matter discussed.
If this is an initial referral, or is for investigations including imaging and blood tests, you will require an appointment with your Doctor.
Please note: Medicare specifically forbids backdated referrals.
Blood and imaging results ordered by one of our Doctors are always sent directly to them for initial review. And if your Doctor is on leave, another Doctor will review these on their behalf. Every single result is reviewed and we communicate this to you as follows:
- A Dr will call you as soon as a result is available if the matter is urgent
- Otherwise, you will receive a phone call from Reception within 7 days of the test being done, to advise either that the Dr wants to discuss your result non-urgently in the next 4 weeks or that the result is normal
We request your understanding because (apart from treating patients), our doctors review hundreds of tests results every week. If you are unwell or are concerned about a result, please book an appointment with your Doctor.
Please note: we do not communicate results of tests not ordered by our Doctors that they have been copied in on. For those results, please contact the referring Doctor.
Your doctor adds a reminder in your medical record so that we contact you about preventative health matters such as repeat blood tests, mammograms, cervical screening and immunisations. There is a record of these reminders on your patient file.
Blood tests, ECG’s, and H-Pylori breath tests do not require an appointment, and are available weekday mornings between 7.30am-12.30pm. When your doctor has requested a more specific test, (eg. a Holter Monitor or 24 hour Blood Pressure recording) these do require an appointment booked with our Douglass Hanly Moir Pathology Service (or at the time of your referral) to ensure the test equipment is on site.
Our doctors do home visits for their regular patients who live locally, when they are too unwell to attend the practice. The out of pocket cost of a home visit is approximately $189.00 during practice hours, and $250.00 after hours.
If this is a medication you have been prescribed by one of our Doctors before, you need a short telephone appointment for this type of request. The fee is $70, with an out of pocket cost after Medicare of $27.15, so long as that is the only matter discussed. For any Sch 8 medications or new prescriptions, a standard consultation is required.