FAQs

How often should my baby see the GP?

There are routine checks for your baby at 6 weeks, 4, 6, 12 and 18 months, then 2, 3 and 4 years old. We will do a check up of your child which usually involves weight, height, head circumference, check how they are progressing with their developmental milestones, and commonly immunisations (at their 6 week, 4, 6, 12, 18 month and 4 year old checks). But of course with children (and being a father myself) queries and concerns will occur at any time, so you are of course welcome to review with your GP in between any of those times.

What are the differences in symptoms between covid-19 and the common cold?

There are actually no difference in symptoms, as you can get a cough, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, headache, fever, shivers, sweats, even vomiting and diarrhoea, amongst others. And we know there are a large number of cases that have no symptoms at all. So it’s always safest that if you have any symptoms, or if you are concerned for potential covid-19, to get a covid-19 swab. You can also call the covid-19 hotline on 1800 020 080 at any time for advice or guidelines, as recommendations and hotspot locations change frequently.

Why have they delayed rolling out the covid-19 vaccine/immunisation in Australia?

Normally when testing any medication or vaccine there would be a 4 stage process of testing a medication, to ensure it’s not only effective, but critically that it’s safe.  Normally the 3rd and 4th stages mean testing the vaccination/immunisation in large groups of people (tens of thousands even up to the whole population), and we get to achieve this by closely monitoring how the covid-19 vaccination progresses especially in the UK and USA as they roll out vaccinations there.  

While they have had to move urgently due to the high numbers of cases and growth of covid-19 there, this is an opportunity for us to monitor and learn lessons from how the vaccination is tolerated in hundreds of thousands to millions of people, and learn as much as we can how to roll out the vaccine as well as possible in Australia.  Ideally by the time of our accelerated rollout we can be sufficiently confident that the vaccine is sufficiently safe and that we have a better idea how to more efficiently roll out the vaccine in Australia.

What is telehealth?

Telehealth is consulting with your doctor via the telephone (audio +/- video), and medicolegally acts just the same as a normal face to face consult. You can book them like any other appointment, you have an appointment slot, you have time devoted to addressing your medical issue/s, and you have a billing to medicare if eligible (or if you don't have medicare and use private insurance, many of them will cover telehealth consultations too, but best to check with your insurer first). 

Telehealth was around in a much more limited form before covid-19, but since covid-19 occurred a lot of patients either weren't - or didn't feel - safe to come into a practice for a face to face consult during the covid-19 pandemic, and the government allowed GPs and specialists to start seeing patients via phone, and allowed us to take medicolegal responsibility for the assessment and management and to bill for the consult we gave over the phone. Previously for phone calls to patients we weren't allowed to do that/to this extent. The obvious benefit of telehealth, and covid-19, have now accelerated this becoming a likely permanent part of medicare and medical care ongoing.

Since the medicare freeze from 2013, there has been an increasing gap between the rebates provided by medicare for bulk billed services and the cost of being able to ‘keep the lights on’ in medical practices.  For as long as possible practices have tried to absorb those gaps, but in the end a lot of the time we are still small businesses that need to pay our staff, pay our bills and maintain costs for things like insurance, accreditation and other necessary costs to keep the practice going and functioning to a good standard.  

Eventually we have gotten to a point where either a practice is not able to pay these costs anymore and has to consider closing, or we have to consider introducing at least some partial fee to help cover some of these costs to be able to keep going as a medical practice and provide ongoing care.  More and more practices all over Australia have had to make the difficult decision to shift to mixed or private billing.  While there have been some measures such as the triple bulk billing incentive to try and address the gap, these measures are still far smaller than the gap of providing care that has continue to grow with inflation while the medicare rebates have not.

https://www.ama.com.au/sites/default/files/2023-10/fees-gaps-poster-2023%20%281%29.pdf

Why do I need a formal consult when I just need a script, a referral or my results?

More might go into these consults than you might think! Whenever we provide any medical care or advice we carry the medicolegal responsibility of providing that care on our shoulders, and we take that responsibility for your care (right or not) very seriously!

When organising a script we need to make sure that medication is still working for you, are you due for a blood pressure check or progress blood test to make sure the dose is right, or if you even need it anymore? Have you medical conditions changed and we need to aim for a stricter target of cholesterol, or optimise drug levels?

With referrals one doctor is asking a clinical question of another specialist doctor and are making sure we are asking the right clinical question or questions, have your medical conditions or medications changed, are your test results now out of range and they need to know about?

Even for your results it can be so valuable to know that your blood results are normal as much as when they’re abnormal, are your diabetes results in target to lower your risk of stroke and renal failure? Are they veering off and so we need to optimise your medication? Are they too good and we need to reduce, or watch out for a greater chance of side effects?

We study for a while to do medicine, and hopefully if we’re doing a good job, you’ll see how much knowledge and skill goes into each consult to provide you with quality and evidence based care!

Isn’t healthcare free? What about the Medicare rebate?

The rebate from Medicare is exactly that, it’s a rebate from the government to help cover the cost of healthcare from your GP. If the service is ‘bulk billed’ then the GP is charging you the same amount as the rebate you are eligible for from Medicare, and usually that rebate will go straight to the GP. 

Otherwise the GP/practice may charge a higher fee and you get your rebate back from Medicare to cover part of the cost. As discussed elsewhere many practices are now having to do this to ensure they can cover their basic costs and ‘keep the lights on’.