Medical Services

OUR SERVICES At Petersham Family Medical Centre, we take pride in providing our full range of medical and allied health services to patients of all backgrounds including those from non-English speaking backgrounds.

MEDICAL SERVICES

General:

• General medical examinations
• Annual health checks
• Immunisation and vaccination
• Insurance and pre-employment medical examinations
• Health risk factor assessments
• Worker’s compensation
• Referrals to specialists
• Minor surgical procedures
• Treatment of moles and skin cancers
• Smoking cessation
• Cardiovascular risk factor analysis
• Disease prevention (including weight reduction, smoking cessation and screening tests)

  Women’s Health :

• Gynecological examinations
• Pap smears
• Implanon insertion and removal
• Menopause management
• Pregnancy testing
• Family planning and contraception

  Children’s Health :

• Immunization
• Newborn assessment
• Developmental assessment

  Men’s Health :

• Prostate examinations
• Men’s health checks

  Travel Health :

• Travel advice and vaccination
• First aid kit advice including medications

  Skin Cancer :

• Skin cancer checks
• Cryotherapy, Surgical procedures

  ALLIED HEALTH SERVICES

• Clinical Psychologists (Bulk-Billing)
• Physiotherapists (Bulk-Billing)
• Acupuncturists
• Chiropractors (Bulk-Billing)
• Podiatrists (Bulk-Billing)
• Dietitians (Bulk-Billing)

For more information please call reception on (02) 9560 8207.

PRIVACY At Petersham Family Medical Centre, we have advanced technology for data security. We keep your data secure through a comprehensive set of policies, processes and infrastructure including access controls, firewalls, data encryption, intrusion detection, system redundancy, and more. We have uncompromising policies and procedures in place to maintain the security of your personal health information at all times and to ensure that this information is available only to authorised members of staff. Your medical records, including your medical history and test results, cannot and will not be shared with anyone outside the Centre, regardless of their relationship to you, without the express consent and authorisation of you, the patient. In certain restricted circumstances the information may be used for the purposes of in-house research, practice meetings and quality assurance but only in a form where the patient cannot be personally identified.

APPOINTMENTS We welcome ‘walk-in’ patients who visit the Centre to see a doctor or health practitioner but do not have an appointment. However, those patients with appointments will generally be seen by the doctor sooner than those who do not have an appointment. We recommend that you make an appointment if possible, particularly if your problem is not urgent and is complex and requires a thorough examination, as this will give our doctors sufficient time to properly attend to your needs.

AFTER HOURS CARE Petersham Family Medical Centre aims to offer 24-hour care for our patients and our Centre is open for extended hours. If you see a doctor at the Centre during these extended hours you will not be charged by any of our doctors if you have a valid Medicare Card. If you need to see an after-hours doctor outside our extended trading hours, please call (02) 8724 6300.

HOME VISITS WITHIN HOURS (within 5km of Petersham Family Medical Centre) Petersham Family Medical Centre does not routinely offer home visits as part of our normal services. If there are extenuating circumstances where you believe a patient may require a home visit from one of our doctors within our trading hours, please call the practice and provide reception staff with as much explanatory details as possible.

The following criteria must be met for home visit:

• The requested visit is in a location that is within five (5) kilometres of our practice
• The patient is a regular patient of our practice
• Location is deemed safe and reasonable
• The patient has the type of problem that necessitates a home visit such as no means of transport, acutely ill, elderly, unable to access our practice facilities due to disability, immobile.

Based on information provided the treating doctor who will exercise their discretion regarding the matter. If the doctor determines that a home visit is possible, there may be an out of pocket expense for the patient. The patient will be notified of this expense prior to the home visit consultation.

TELEPHONING YOUR DOCTOR You may contact your Centre doctor or health provider during the Centre’s opening hours. If the doctor is not available at the time you call, our receptionist staff will take a message. Some doctors at the Centre, at their discretion, may provide their patients with their contact details outside the Centre’s opening hours.

REPEAT PRESCRIPTIONS & REFERRALS If and when you require a repeat prescription for medication we request that you make an appointment to see your regular doctor at the Centre. In cases of urgent need, at the discretion of your regular doctor, the doctor may issue a repeat prescription without a consultation for you to collect. The Centre will charge a small administration fee for this service, as there is no rebate paid by Medicare for this service. If you wish to be referred to a specialist, you must see a doctor in person first. The reasons for this are that a specialist cannot see a patient without a referral from a General Practitioner, and the General Practitioner must first evaluate the patient’s needs to judge whether a referral is needed and whom to best refer the patient to. In most cases the doctor will be happy to refer you to the specialist you wish to see. Medicare does not allow backdated referrals.

MEDICAL CERTIFICATES Medical Certificates are legal documents. They can only be issued for genuine medical conditions that require the patient to take time off from work or study. To obtain a medical certificate you must first attend a consultation with a doctor. It is illegal for doctors to back-date medical certificates. A small fee may be charged for replacement medical certificates.

RESULTS We recommend that following a test, patients return for a follow up consultation to discuss the test results. This is because the results of the test(s) may require explanation and further action.

REMINDERS All patients are automatically enrolled in our internal recall and reminder system for regular health checks such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Please let your doctor know if you do not want to be included in our recall and reminder system. Notification of all pap smears, childhood immunisations and some adult vaccinations will be provided to the relevant National Registry. Please advise your doctor if you do not wish this notification to occur.

COMMENTS & COMPLAINTS At Petersham Family Medical Centre, we continuously try to improve our services. For this reason, we welcome your comments on how to improve our services. Please talk to your doctor or our receptionists about your concerns or suggestions. Alternately, we have a confidential suggestion box located in our waiting room. In the unfortunate event of less-than-satisfactory service from the Centre’s administrative or medical staff, please ask to speak to the doctor concerned or the practice manager on duty. Our doctors are independent practitioners and are individually responsible for their clinical decisions. You can also lodge an official complaint with the Health Complaints Commissioner at Locked Mail Bag 18, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012.