Northside Clinic is a mixed billing clinic (both private billing and bulk billing) aiming to offer the same standard of healthcare to all. Unless you hold a valid Pension or Concession Card, you should expect a charge for your appointment. Knowing what the fees are is the patient responsibility and this information is available to you. Please ensure you are aware of the potential fees before your appointment.
Bulking billing is available for holders of valid Aged Pension Cards, Disability Pension Cards and children whose parent/carer holds a valid heath care card.
Bulk Billing is at the discretion of your Dr and is something that needs to be discussed with them at the time of your appointment, not afterwards. If one Dr has been Bulk Billing you on a regular basis, it should not be assumed that another Dr will also Bulk Bill you.
Current Fees as of December 2024
Please note: A $5 additional charge is applied for Saturday appointments and Bulk billing and concessional rates do not apply on Saturdays.
Effective December 2024
Effective December 2024
Procedure Fees
Treatment Room Fees
Charged by the doctor and applies to all patients regardless of bulk billing or concessional status (Medicare rebate available).
Treatment Room Fees apply to all patients regardless of concession or pension entitlements. This cost covers the nurses time and the cost of the consumables used during the procedure. Treatment room fees are not covered by Medicare.
Please speak with your doctor BEFORE any procedure to ensure you are aware of the fees expected to be paid on the day of your procedure.
Skin Excisions
Sometimes the billing for an excision is placed on hold. This is done to await the return of the pathology of the excision, as required by Medicare. When this happens, you will not pay on the day of the procedure. Instead, on your return appointment for wound check and/or removal of sutures, your doctor will discuss with you the results and will process the billing. It is at this return appointment that you will be required to pay for the excision and the treatment room fee.
Nursing Fees
There will be a fee for some nurse led treatments that are not covered by Medicare.
TAC or Workcover Claims
We do not invoice third parties or employers directly. Patients are required to settled accounts on the day and claim back via Workcover or TAC
All fees owing, are payable at the end of the consultation and must be paid in full on the day. We accept cash if correct amount, EFTPOS and credit cards (Visa and Mastercard).
Please note there will be a $7 late fee applied to your account for all appointments/procedures that are not paid on the day. You will be responsible for claiming rebates from Medicare for appointments not paid on the day.
For accounts paid on the day Northside Clinic will transmit your payment to Medicare. Medicare reimburses you the nominated rebate amount which is set by Medicare. Any concerns regarding your Medicare rebate payments should be directed to Medicare.
Report requests involving life insurance, superannuation – these are not covered by Medicare. A private fee will be charged for the completion of these reports in an appointment. Please note that a 30 minute appointment is required and you may be requested by your GP to return for subsequent appointments to complete the report.
Report Request from WorkCover/TAC/Lawyers – these are not completed in an appointment. The request can be provided to the clinic via our email address (admin@nothsideclinic.net.au). The clinic will liaise directly with the 3rd party (Workcover Agent/TAC/Lawyer) to ensure completion of the request and ensure required consent from the patient has been provided. We invoice for the doctor’s time a as per WorkCover and TAC fee schedules where they apply. Please be aware that we often experience delays in the payment of these invoices. The request will be completed once the invoice has been paid by the 3rd party. We are happy to answer any questions you may have when going through this process.
Repeat Prescriptions, Referrals & Pathology Test Results
Require an appointment with your doctor.
Reminders & Recalls
Northside Clinic maintains a confidential database for reminding and recalling patients for follow up treatments, immunisations, cervical screening tests, and other preventable healthcare issues. Patients who do not wish to be included on the database should advise their doctor. Whilst we make every effort to send reminder messages, it is still the responsibility of the patient to return for further visits if your doctor has indicated that this is necessary.
Registered patients of the clinic will receive SMS reminders of their appointments. This is sent out the day before the appointment. Please respond to the message to indicate your confirmation of attendance. Unconfirmed appointments may be cancelled. If you do not wish to receive reminder SMS messages for appointments, please advise the reception staff.
Results
Each of the doctors at Northside Clinic manage their results on an individual basis. Please ensure that you confirm with the doctor you see, how they are going to communicate the results with you. Some doctors will routinely notify their patients, others will only notify you if they wish to speak with you about a result. This will usually be done via an sms to ask you to book a non-urgent results appointment. Those appointments can occur within 1-2 weeks of being asked to book a results appointment. The doctors request that you book with the doctor requesting you make the result appointment as they are the only who is aware of your result.
If you routinely wish to receive your results, please ask during your consultation with your doctor to have the result uploaded to you MyHealth Record. This request needs to be done at the time of your appointment so the upload request can be recorded on the referral.
Access to After Hours Healthcare
In an emergency situation, please dial 000. The nearest Emergency Department is at St Vincent’s Hospital, 41 Victoria Parade, Fitzroy 3065, phone (03) 9231 2211.
Locum Service
‘National Home Doctor Service’ can be contacted on 13 7425 for any out of hours medical services.
Weeknights 6:00pm to 8:00am.
Weekends from 12 noon Saturday, all day Sunday and Public Holidays.
Please discuss fees and payment options when booking services as they may differ from Northside Clinic fees.
For more information visit, https://homedoctor.com.au/
Home Visits
Please contact Northside Clinic to discuss.
Statement Regarding Patient Fees and Patients with Outstanding Debt
We write to update our patients and inform you on our position on how the clinic will be handling outstanding patient debt and to address some of the negative comments made online regarding fees.
Our ethos at Northside Clinic has from the beginning, been about accessibility and providing high quality healthcare for all members of the community. However, like a lot of businesses, we are facing a potentially financially turbulent period, and cannot continue to operate at 2020 prices when we have 2025 expenses.
We have unfortunately had to make the difficult decision to stop routinely Bulk Billing Concession Card holders with the introduction of a Concessional fee, and we have also had to implement regular fee increases.
Neither of those decisions were done on a whim.
Our aim is to provide a high level of care to all our patients, and that needs to be balanced with retaining the highly skilled doctors who consult here at Northside Clinic.
GPs are not immune to the pinch of the rising costs of living. When compared to other Specialist areas, GPs earn significantly less.
Perhaps what people do not realise is that GPs are contractors and are therefore required to pay the clinic for utilising the rooms, the administration staff, the nursing staff, the treatment room materials. They also need to pay themselves and contribute to their superannuation from what they earn. They do not get paid sick leave or annual leave. When they don’t work, they don’t get paid. If patients don’t pay a gap fee for their appointments, doctors receive a much lower payment, and the clinic receives even less.
Since the clinic has made changes to our billing policy and increased fees, we have received a lot of feedback about the clinic being money hungry and going for cash grabs.
During a time when we are trying our best to keep our services accessible and affordable, we are experiencing what we can only refer to as a disappointing response. People have been very happy to come here for exceptional service when they didn’t have to pay, then at a time of need when we ask some of you to now pay for that service, it feels like some of our loyal patients are turning on us.
If you are a patient, you would know that we are humble in what we do, we prioritise our patients and our contracting Dr’s echo our ethos.
If you are no longer happy to attend the clinic and pay for your service, you are more than welcome to attend another clinic. Our Doctors are human, and they will understand your individual situation if you are struggling financially, however if you are charged for a service, please respect that and settle your account on the day.
From the inception of the clinic, we have always required your account to be settled on the day of your appointment, this is not a new requirement. To assist you in being able to pay on the day, we implemented changes to now offer your rebate be paid back to your debit card at the time of payment. We have also engaged service providers who offer online payments to allow automatic payment of your account on the day of service, if you have chosen to record your card details with that provider.
However, some patients have not paid on the day and we continue to experience people walking out of the clinic without paying and ignoring the calls from the clinic to take payment for the service your Doctor has provided you. Due to a large amount of unpaid patient debt, we are needing to address this and will be implementing the following policy. Any unpaid patient account that is outstanding for 3 months, will result in you no longer being able to book an appointment at the clinic. This is in effect from 1st December 2024.
Medicare has a small window for the submission of patient activity. We need to report this activity and if we are required to write off your unpaid service, then you are not welcome back.
You will receive multiple reminders to pay your account including the clinic staff phoning you, SMS reminders to please contact the clinic to settle your account, and also email correspondence requesting you contact the clinic to settle your account. We ask that if you are experiencing financial difficulties that you contact the clinic and not ignore our attempts in contacting you. It is the responsibility of the patient to ensure that their contact details are up to date, as we will be sending our contact attempts via the contact details we have for you, that were confirmed at your last appointment.
If our attempts to seek payment for your service goes unanswered, you will no longer be able to book an appointment at Northside Clinic.
This may feel like an extreme measure, however, we cannot continue to carry the debt of unpaid patient accounts.
We do appreciate the continued support of dedicated patients, and we implore you to please provide feedback to your local and state MP and health ministers, to help General Practice fight for better Medicare rebates and funding.
Victorian Minister of Health
Phone: (03) 9096 8561
Email: minister.health@health.vic.gov.au
Address: Level 22 50 Lonsdale Street Melbourne VIC 3000.
Contact Ministers at Department of Health and Aged Care
https://www.health.gov.au/contact-a-minister
- The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Aged Care
Organisation: Australian Government - The Hon Rebecca White MP
Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care
Organisation: Australian Government