Policies & Procedures

Appointments

All patients are required to have an appointment.

There are urgent on the day appointments available every day. Please phone to make these on the morning, they may not be with your usual doctor.

If you have a preference for a particular doctor, we will make every effort to assist you. Otherwise you will always be offered another doctor to help you. Any other doctors in the practice can readily see your electronic record. All medical records are confidential and will only be released with your consent.

Please note; no doctors at WFMP will prescribe drugs of addiction to new patients

Billing

We are a private billing practice.

There is no bulk billing. All appointments will have a private fee. Medicare rebates are available to those eligible.

We appreciate full payment at time of consultation. EFTPOS, Visa/MasterCard are preferred.

Results, Prescriptions and Referrals

Results of X-rays and pathology will require an appointment unless prior arrangement has been made with the doctor. Please pick up your X-rays before your appointment and bring the films with you.

Repeat prescriptions and referrals will also require an appointment to allow us to monitor your condition and keep your records up to date.

Referrals need your doctor to send a quality letter with necessary and recent history and results attached. It is illegal for us to backdate your referral.

Practice Communication Policy

Accessing your Doctor by telephone

Telephone consultations are available by booking through hotdocs. These appointment will be privately charged and you may be eligible for a medicare rebate.

Electronic Communication

Email communication is discouraged as emails are not regularly monitored.

Patients have the ability to book through our online booking system

Drug of Dependance Prescribing Policy

Many people require strong, potentially addictive medication to help manage their condition(s). Of concern are ‘drugs of dependence’ (eg opioid medications and benzodiazepines), particularly when these are prescribed on an ongoing basis. Due to increasing reports of abuse of prescription drugs and patient behavioural problems, KFMP/WFMP has established a policy to ensure adequate treatment of your condition, while reducing the risk of problems with drug prescriptions.

The major points are described below.

If you are a new patient to the practice:

It may take time to get accurate medical information about your condition. Until such information is available, your GP will not prescribe any medication. It is our policy that GPs do not prescribe drugs of dependence until they have a full clinical picture, and do not prescribe opioids to new patients.
Your GP may decide not to continue prescribing an opioid medication previously prescribed for you. It may be determined that such a medication is not suitable. It is our policy that GPs do not prescribe drugs of dependence if they feel that previous prescriptions were inappropriate.
Your GP will evaluate your condition and only prescribe an opioid of the strength necessary for you. This may be different than what another doctor may have given you in the past.

General practice standards:

If the decision to prescribe is taken after a shared discussion of goals, plans, risks and benefits, you may be required to confirm your consent in writing.
You may be asked to sign a contract that will detail our practice’s expectations when prescribing drugs of dependence. This contract details your responsibilities as a patient taking a drug of dependence; any prescriptions issues; advice on taking your medications; how we will monitor your care; and the standards of behaviour that are expected. This may also include adding other members to your treating team including non-GP specialists and allied health team members.
Patients may need to acknowledge that their care requirements may be complex, and that referral for ongoing care for all or part of your healthcare may be required. It is our practice policy that patient care is matched with the level of complexity.

Patients are reminded that we have a zero tolerance on issues relating to staff abuse. Any threats to staff will result in transfer of your care.

Zero Tolerance Policy

All our staff are trained and dedicated to serve you and you will be treated with courtesy and respect at all times. In return, we ask that you and anyone that you bring with you to the Practice treat our administrative and clinical staff with the same courtesy and respect.

We have a ZERO TOLERANCE approach to any verbal, aggressive and violent abuse and behaviour towards our staff or other patients. We respectfully advise you that abuse and/or violence will not be tolerated.

If a patient or anyone a patient brings with them to the Practice, is abusive, aggressive or violent towards our staff and/or other patients the police will be called and may result in you being removed from our Practice list.

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Privacy Policy

Introduction

This privacy policy is to provide information to you, our patient, on how your personal information (which includes your health information) is collected and used within our practice, and the circumstances in which we may share it with third parties.

Why and when your consent is necessary

When you register as a patient of our practice, you provide consent for our GPs and practice staff to access and use your personal information so they can provide you with the best possible healthcare. Only staff who need to see your personal information will have access to it. If we need to use your information for anything else, we will seek additional consent from you to do this.

Why do we collect, use, hold and share your personal information?

Our practice will need to collect your personal information to provide healthcare services to you. Our main purpose for collecting, using, holding and sharing your personal information is to manage your health. We also use it for directly related business activities, such as financial claims and payments, practice audits and accreditation, and business processes (eg staff training).

What personal information do we collect?

The information we will collect about you includes your:

names, date of birth, addresses, contact details
medical information including medical history, medications, allergies, adverse events, immunisations,
social history, family history and risk factors
Medicare number (where available) for identification and claiming purposes
healthcare identifiers

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Dealing with us anonymously

You have the right to deal with us anonymously or under a pseudonym unless it is impracticable for us to do so or unless we are required or authorised by law to only deal with identified individuals.

How do we collect your personal information?

Our practice may collect your personal information in several different ways.

When you make your first appointment our practice staff will collect your personal and demographic information via your registration.
During the course of providing medical services, we may collect further personal information. Information can also be collected through electronic transfer of prescriptions (eTP), My Health Record, eg via Shared Health Summary, Event Summary.
We may also collect your personal information when you send us an email or SMS, telephone us, make an online appointment.
In some circumstances personal information may also be collected from other sources. Often this is because it is not practical or reasonable to collect it from you directly. This may include information from:

your guardian or responsible person
other involved healthcare providers, such as specialists, allied health professionals, hospitals,
community health services and pathology and diagnostic imaging services
your health fund, Medicare, or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (as necessary).

When, why and with whom do we share your personal information?

We sometimes share your personal information:

with third parties who work with our practice for business purposes, such as accreditation agencies or information technology providers – these third parties are required to comply with APPs and this policy with other healthcare providers.
when it is required or authorised by law (eg court subpoenas).
when it is necessary to lessen or prevent a serious threat to a patient’s life, health or safety or public
health or safety, or it is impractical to obtain the patient’s consent.
to assist in locating a missing person
to establish, exercise or defend an equitable claim
for the purpose of confidential dispute resolution process
when there is a statutory requirement to share certain personal information (eg some diseases require
mandatory notification)
during the course of providing medical services, through eTP, My Health Record (eg via Shared
Health Summary, Event Summary).

Only people who need to access your information will be able to do so. Other than in the course of providing medical services or as otherwise described in this policy, our practice will not share personal information with any third party without your consent.

We will not share your personal information with anyone outside Australia (unless under exceptional circumstances that are permitted by law) without your consent.

Our practice will not use your personal information for marketing any of our goods or services directly to you without your express consent. If you do consent, you may opt out of direct marketing at any time by notifying our practice in writing.

Our practice may use your personal information to improve the quality of the services we offer to our patients through research and analysis of our patient data.

We may provide de-identified data to other organisations to improve population health outcomes. The information is secure, patients cannot be identified and the information is stored within Australia. You can let our reception staff know if you do not want your information included.

How do we store and protect your personal information?

Personal information that we hold is protected by securing our premises, placing passwords and varying access levels on databases to limit access and protect electronic information from unauthorised interference, access, modification and disclosure. As well as providing locked cupboards and rooms for any storage of physical records.

How do we use document automation technologies?

Electronic documents drafted by this practice such as referrals utilise document automation technologies to assist our systems and workflows. Document automation technologies our practice implements are established through our selected secure medical software built-in word processor, the built-in word processor allows our practice to set up automated simple and computed variables, these automated variables are set up to strictly disclose relevant medical information related to the medical treatments required in these documents.

Our medical software is user-unique password protected, and each user is granted authorisation accordingly to their role and responsibilities. We ensure your privacy is our utmost concern at all times.

How can you access and correct your personal information at our practice?

You have the right to request access to, and correction of, your personal information.

Our practice acknowledges patients may request access to their medical records. We require you to put this request in writing and our practice will respond within a reasonable time. There may be a fee for the administrative cost of retrieving and providing you with copies of your records.

Our practice will take reasonable steps to correct your personal information where the information is not accurate or up to date. From time to time, we will ask you to verify that your personal information held by our practice is correct and current. You may also request that we correct or update your information.

How can you lodge a privacy-related complaint, and how will the complaint be handled at our practice?

We take complaints and concerns regarding privacy seriously. You should express any privacy concerns you may have in writing or in person to our practice manager or receptionists. We will then attempt to resolve it in accordance with our resolution procedure.

Website Policy

In addition to web service logs, we use Google Analytics (including the Advertising Features) and Google Tag Manager, which are web analysis services provided by Google Inc. ('Google').

All the information we collect using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager is for internal purposes only. We cannot identify individuals based on the data we collect and we won't publish any of it on our website.

Reports obtained from Google Analytics are used to improve the efficiency and usability of this website. Google Analytics uses cookies to help analyse how users use this site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. The Advertising Features is a function within Google Analytics to get more advanced information about our users, such as user demographics, user interests, and frequency of visits. For more information on how Google uses the data collected, visit Google's Privacy Policy and Google Analytics Terms of Service. To opt out and prevent your data from being collected by Google Analytics, you can download Google's opt out add-on.

Google Tag Manager lets us combine codes on different areas of the website and collect data in ways that we can't do with Google Analytics. For more information on how Google uses the data collected, visit Google's Privacy Policy.

By using this website, you consent to Google processing data about you in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Further Information

Further information on privacy legislation is available from:

Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner – ph: 1300 363 992

Office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner – ph: (02) 9268 5588

Office of the Health Services Commissioner (Victoria) – ph: 1800 136 066