January 2023 WellFemme Doctors' Bulletin
Hi everyone, Happy New 2023! I hope you’ve all had some decent rest these holidays and feel refreshed for the new year. Here’s a roundup of admin updates for you:
- Price rise. An email was sent to our patient list on Sunday advising of the new appointment prices, which have been active on the booking page since last Friday. It included the following information:
“Our doctors take the time needed to assess you thoroughly at each visit. You may not realise however that our specialist GP's actually earn less than in regular General Practice, where they would see many more patients per hour.
WellFemme is committed to ensuring affordable access to our services for all women who need them. Medicare does not adequately rebate patients for long consultations, so to keep costs down for vulnerable patients we have a "pay it forward" policy: $20 from each full-priced appointment goes towards funding women with lower incomes, so that their gap payment is less than $50.
40- minute New Patient appointments have increased by $15 and are now $275 (or $160 for pension or concession card holders) with a Medicare rebate of $113.30. Reviews are now $140 (concession rate $95) with a rebate of $76.95, and eScripts are $25 ($15 concessions).
Due to some limitations of our current systems we will continue to request full payment at the time of booking, however we are working towards being able to charge a deposit only upfront in future. If you have some financial hardship and need to discuss an alternative payment arrangement please get in touch.”
2. Upfront payments. As noted in the above email, Halaxy could not provide us with a solution where we could both obtain an upfront deposit AND collect credit card details from the patient; to do this would require some manual processing by the admin team for every booking, which is not feasible. Halaxy promises they have this requirement on their development list, but for now we continue to take full payment at time of booking.
3. New online community. Please read the information on this page about our new closed Facebook community that I am opening up shortly, so you know what that’s about: https://hello.wellfemme.com.au/cheer-squad-waitlist This group will also be offered an early Beta-test version of the healthy lifestyle course I’m putting together for peri/menopausal women. A campaign is going out next weekend about it and a page link has been added to everyone’s client summaries. It would be great if you can also mention it to your patients who need a bit of extra support making healthy changes.
4. Admin tips. I’ve been making a list of common admin pitfalls/ solutions. Click HERE!
5. Clinical meetings. Westies are taking care of themselves presently; Easties have had calendar invitations sent to resume meetings on Mon 13th Feb for the 2nd and 4th Monday each month, 8.30pm AEDST/ 7.30pm AEST.
6. Bulletin access page. Carlie has created a page so you can always refer back to these Doctors Bulletins as needed: https://hello.wellfemme.com.au/wellFemme-doctors-bulletin
I look forward to a hugely fun, productive year. Keep well and keep in touch.
