October 2023 WellFemme Doctors' Bulletin

Hi everyone. This bulletin has been a long time coming… my apologies! The intention is to have admin meetings on the first Monday of each month, but of course the last one was a public holiday for many in the middle of the school holidays. The "menopause uncensored" summit has kept me very busy as well. As a result, there are a few things to note:

1. COMINGS & GOINGS: Sadly we are saying goodbye to Sunita and Michelle, who have set up their own amazing menopause practice in Perth (Hera). We wish you all the best girls! Niamh is also leaving us for now due to ill health in the family. Our thoughts are with you at this difficult time Niamh, and we are sorry to see you go.

Happily, Megan is coming back from maternity leave in November (Superwoman that she is, with one-year-old twins!) and we welcome Rebecca Cece’s gorgeous new daughter Freya into the world.

We are also very lucky to have three new Dr's joining WellFemme in November/ December: Justine Johnston and Krishna Ghosh from Sydney, and Rebecca Jarvis in Geelong. You'll see them pop up in the WhatsApp chat group shortly, so please introduce yourselves and make them feel welcome.

2. ESTROGEN PATCH SUPPLY ISSUES: these are likely to continue for some months to come. As we've been doing, when patients ask for their scripts to be changed the admin team will book 10 minute phone appointments for you after the end of your lists, so you can chat with the patient and get paid for redoing their scripts. Due to recent changes in telehealth bulk billing rules (which require tedious online form filling on each occasion), I've instructed the team to charge $42 for these, and the patient will get a Medicare rebate of $41.20 afterwards.

3. SERIOUS SCRIPT GLITCH… READ THIS! As mentioned in WhatsApp, you MUST be clicked into the clinical note for the day/ date the script should be linked to before generating the script (or create a new clinical note for the current day). We have had the situation where a doctor in advertently was clicked into another doctor's notes when they created a prescription, and the prescription went out with the other doctors' details on them. This is obviously a serious potential problem, which we have flagged to Halaxy and they assure us that they are addressing it ASAP. I will keep rattling their cage!

4. CYBER SECURITY. My partner Pete has kindly taken on the role of WellFemme operations officer, and sent around our cyber security policy. Please do read it; there are many potential areas of vulnerability for our patients' personal details, and as a provider of private telehealth services it is your responsibility to make sure you are taking all precautions. Pete has listed some very simple things you can do to ensure that patient’s personal details will not be compromised, and made a demonstration video to show you how to set up a VPN. The document is in the WellFemme doctors’ Google folder and I have reattached below.

5. LEAVE ARRANGEMENTS. If you haven't already done so, please make sure the practice managers know your dates for leave over the Christmas period. As a general rule, when you are taking short periods of leave, it would be great if you can still check your Halaxy tasks which include patient results and sending out reminders. Unfortunately Halaxy doesn't allow us to redirect your pre-set tasks to another doctor, but if you are away for longer periods of time please approach another doctor and ask them to see your review patients and check your results. Then let the admin team know, and they will direct any queries and results for your patients to your nominated “buddy”.

6. BLOCKING OFF TIME IN YOUR SCHEDULE. We've had some situations where a doctor has made plans during some unbooked patient time and then Admin staff subsequently booked patients into those spots. To avoid this situation you can block off time in your schedule yourselves. We have a range of Halaxy videos that we've created for you in the doctors shared Google folder, but if there seems to be some restriction to you being able to do this let us know and we’ll check your Halaxy admin settings. Here is the link that shows you how to block off time in your calendar: LINK (you must be logged into google using the email address that I sent this email to). The link to check out the range of Halaxy video’s I’ve created is here: LINK

LINK FOR THE ENTIRE WELLFEMME DOCTORS' SHARED DOCUMENT FOLDER.

7. NEW PRICES AND BILLING: New patients: $295/ $165 conc, Reviews: $165/ $95, Short (10mins, only booked on your instructions to staff): $75/ $45, Brief (under 6mins, on your instruction): $30 and eScripts: $30/$15. We can vary these prices at your request, or credit/ refund a patient if their appointment doesn’t take as long as anticipated. As we are no longer bulk billing, if you have a patient that you don't wish to be out of pocket just let the Admin team know; they will book them an appointment for less than a dollar above the rebate amount, and your patient will get the rebate processed the night following their appointment.

8. NO MORE FREE TRIALS. Patients can no longer book free trials online; there is a message on our homepage however, stating that if patients are in financial difficulty and unsure of whether they want to commit to an appointment, they can email us to request a 10-minute phone chat with a doctor. Admin staff will approach you from time to time to ask if you will speak to one of these patients.

9. “MENOPAUSE UNCENSORED SUMMIT”. As I write this, the Summit is going well so far. We've had over 600 registrations, which means that a lot more people are now much better informed about the menopausal transition. I might make this an annual event; we’ll see what the feedback shows. If you would like access to the replay portal, and you haven't already let me know please indicate this with your reply answers below.

10. “NEXT PHASE” WOMEN’S WELLNESS PROGRAM. It’s long been my intention to create an education and support program to help women make (and sustain) healthy lifestyle changes. There have been many setbacks, but my “Next Phase” program is finally finished! The first Beta test round of 30 women will complete the program this week. Over the next two months, I'll be tweaking the details to get it ready for commercial launch in January/ February. I will be adding information to your "client summary” templates in January about the program, and I'd be very grateful if you would recommend the program to your patients who might benefit from it. Let me know if you would like a link to review the content of the program for yourself, but summary information is here on the sales page. 

11. A QUESTION FOR YOU: PLEASE HIT “REPLY” AND ANSWER:

If a patient is having patch supply issues, but we can see that their scripts were due to run out anyway (which would normally require a $30/ $15 eScript request), what gap would you like to charge for the 10-minute phone appointment?

I look forward to seeing you all for our next Admin meeting on Monday 6th November at 8 pm AEDT; I’ll try to keep it brief! A calendar invitation with this link has been emailed to you.