​​This practice is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of you health information and has protocols in place to safeguard your privacy. All employees are required to sign a confidentiality agreement upon commencement of employment and all computers are password protected. Your medical information is confidential and will not be shared with any third party without your consent.

Patients are reminded that referrals to other specialists may incur charges that are not fully reimbursed by Medicare. Patients are encouraged to clarify charges at the time of booking. It is illegal to backdate referrals to other specialists. We are happy to provide a referral in a consultation. If you lose or forget to take your referral/ test request form to your appointment, you will need to come back to get another one after consultation with the doctor. Referrals WILL NOT be faxed/emailed/posted to the specialist or service provider.

Results of investigations and the contents of specialist letters cannot be discussed over the phone due to privacy laws. Peak medical bodies such as the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners recognise that optimal health care delivery occurs when such results and issues are discussed in a face-to-face consultation with your doctor. A negative result for tests doesn’t exclude some illnesses and it is therefore important to appreciate the limitations of tests and whether or not further investigations may be required to assess the problem. Our general recommendation to optimize your health care is to follow up your test results in person, in consultation.

Patients are seen by APPOINTMENT ONLY. TELEHEALTH can only be booked by calling the practice on 9153 5363. To be eligible for telehealth you must have had a face to face service at our practice in the last 12 months. Telehealth consults for new patients are not covered by Medicare.

No drugs of addiction (For example Valium, Xanax, Endone, Oxycontin and others) are prescribed at this practice.

Prescriptions are NOT usually given without seeing the doctor unless circumstances are exceptional. You need to have a review by your Doctor when requiring repeat prescriptions

In order that we may contact you, please ensure that we have your current telephone number and address. If you have a new or an updated Health Care Card, Pensioners Concession Card or Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, please present it to the receptionist so that it can be recorded for billing purposes.
Please note that we cannot bulk bill patients with an invalid or expired Medicare Card. You will have to pay an upfront fee in this case.

An interpreter & relay service for hearing impairment can be arranged but patients are advised that this is subject to availability of the relevant service.

The practice will attempt to inform patients of results which need discussion, however due to the volume of patients seen, this system requires backup and patients are therefore required to follow up on such matters in the best interests of their health. This will ensure that no important results are overlooked. The practice may also send out preventive medicine messages from time to time (such as reminders for the influenza injection in the early Autumn, Health Assessments for over 75s and GP management plans). We base any phone calls we make to you on the numbers you provide. Kindly update these when needed.

All childhood immunisations are available and administered free of charge. Overseas travellers may need immunisations specific for each destination; these are determined for each individual and a script issued for supply at a pharmacy. It is advisable to allow at least six weeks prior to departure for optimal chance of protection.

It is not always possible to avoid extended waiting times on some days due to the unpredictability of consultation requirements for patients. Waiting times also increase due to seriously unwell patients or those with complex health care needs. Although it is not possible to inform you of the estimated waiting time, we can always advise you the number of patients ahead of you. 

To comply with current Government regulations, smoking is not permitted within the building or within 4 metres of the building entry. 

Verbal and/or physical abuse toward our staff is not tolerated and any patient displaying inappropriate behaviour will be asked to leave. The patient may also be banned from the practice at the discretion of the practice manager or doctor.

Incoming telephone calls to the doctors are restricted to matters of medical urgency. When the doctor is consulting, a member of the practice staff will take your message and we will endeavour to respond to your query promptly. You may be requested to ring back later after staff discuss your queries with the doctor. In the event of serious illness you may be put straight through to Dr Chauhan. 

Considerations: Patients, staff and collaborating treatment providers may expect or seek the use of email to manage their health care and health information. Although this is sometimes based on convenience and ease of use, it is important to recognise that such communications when unencrypted may result in access / interception by unauthorised parties and this would represent a breach of Australian Privacy Laws. Staff should communicate this to patients when relevant so that they understand the limitations of sending us information using this method. It is not our policy to send clinical information to patients via email so as to minimise the risks inherent to this practice including, but not limited to, privacy and security considerations. During the covid-19 pandemic with the utilisation of telehealth for patient consultations, patients have requested the use of email for test results and pathology/radiology referrals. In this instance, patients are given the option of having the communication encrypted with a 4-digit PIN to receive the relevant email from Best Practice Clinical software to further minimise the risk of privacy breach.

We are able to communicate with medical consultants using health link via our Best Practice Software platform. This is encrypted to provide a high level of security.

It is not our policy to use email for management of patient information. Where a patient sends information to us via email, it is policy to advise the patient of the inherent risks of such a practice and recommend either delivery of the information via USB / CD / encrypted email from within or Best Practice software or via permission-based access to their online My Health Record where this information can be accessed, if available, with download to their clinical file in our Best Practice software, where relevant. 

Other options for the safer transmittal of confidential medical information include facsimile and post. These are the preferred alternative methodologies for communication.

This policy is informed by the online publication “Using email in general practice – privacy and security matrix”.