Village Family Medical Centre: Communication Policy
There are multiple ways in which this practice communicates with patients and third parties including face to face, telephone, fax and email.
Telephone – Patients can contact the practice between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm Saturday. Our reception staff may use a triage system to assess the urgency of the patients’ needs and concerns. Our reception staff will also perform a three-point identifier check to ensure the correct patient chart is matched to the patient on the phone. Please note: it is usually not possible to speak with a doctor at the time of calling. A message will be taken and an internal message will be sent to the appropriate Doctor. If deemed urgent the Doctor will be informed between consultations. Patients are advised that the Doctor will respond to their call either at the end of their consultations or if there is a break during the day. If the matter is deemed urgent an exception may be made.
Clinical Correspondence - When correspondence is received from other healthcare providers, it is directly imported into the patient’s file and then sent through to the doctor to review. This includes results, emails and specialist letters. If the addressed doctor is not available and the correspondence is urgent, another doctor will review and action as necessary.
Email – email is not a secure form of communication and is not encouraged by Village Family Medical Centre. For this reason our doctors and clinical staff will not answer clinical or medical questions via email. We encourage our patients to make an appointment to discuss their medical or clinical issue. Our staff endeavour to respond to email messages within 24 hours.
SMS – SMS messages are sent to remind patients of scheduled appointments, health reminders and health recalls. Please make sure you update the practice if there is a change to your mobile number. Please let us know if you would like to be removed from the SMS list.
Post – for patients who have opted out of SMS, a letter may be sent regarding reminders or recalls. A letter may also be sent is a patient has not responded to SMS messages regarding results and health reminders.
Letters received by the practice are scanned into the patient chart and forwarded to the doctor to review.
Our website is updated regularly and contains the practice contact details, location, opening hours and information regarding fees and services offered. Our after-hours doctor service details are also available, as is online booking for the practitioners during office hours.
Communicating with patients with special needs
A contact list of translator and interpreter services and services for patients with a disability is maintained, updated regularly and readily available to all staff at reception. These include:
• Auslan services 1300 AUSLAN
• Translation and Interpreter Service (TIS) Doctors Priority Line 1300 131 450