Fees for consultations and services outside of appointments

Fees are charged for all telehealth and in room consultations. A schedule of estimated fees is provided to all clients when booking appointments. These fees will vary between doctors - if you require a quote, please speak to a member of the administration team.

Appointments are devoted to the clinical care needs of your child and family. In general, your Paediatrician will not have time to complete additional forms or non-clinical administration tasks during your allocated appointment time.

Doctors are often asked to complete forms, write letters, make telephone calls and a variety of other activities that occur outside of face-to-face consultations.

Doctors are bound by medico-legal and ethical constraints, but if they can do the requested paperwork, it is likely that a fee will apply.

The doctors are generally happy to assist with completion of additional forms pertaining to your child’s care. If you need NDIS, Education Qld AARA, Centrelink or other forms completed, the administration team will arrange for your doctor to do this in a separate appointment time, or non-clinical time, at an additional charge.

Charges for administration tasks including form completion will vary according to the time taken to complete. Estimated costs are as follows: -

Centrelink, NDIS application or Education Qld AARA Forms - $ 100 - 200 per form, dependent on complexity of the form and time required to complete.

This applies whether forms are provided to the doctor during a consultation OR outside of usual consultations and the fees are charged depending on time taken to complete ( with no Medicare rebate available). If an additional telephone review consult is required, for the doctor to obtain additional required information, a Medicare phone consult rebate applies.

Clarification of Purpose medication forms (for NDIS or Department of Child Safety)       $ 50

Contact between appointments and additional fees:

Between appointments and in most cases where you need a new script, referral or you have additional paperwork to be completed, under our shared care agreement your GP should be able to do this. If you have additional questions or needs, an appointment is required.

Medication Prescriptions:

Script fee (script only and no consult associated, no Medicare rebate)             Cost    $ 50

If you require a script between scheduled appointments, you are often best to obtain these from your GP. If the GP is unable to provide this, the Paediatrician may be able to provide a short script to last until you are able to arrange a review. The cost will be $50.  You are strongly encouraged to plan and book an appointment with your GP or your Paediatrician well before your child’s medication runs out to avoid disappointment.

Please note: Legally as part of providing good quality practice, a child should not be issued a script without 6-12 monthly physical review of their growth and health by a doctor, so a GP or Paediatrician visit and examination is generally required to provide repeat scripts at these 6 and 12 monthly intervals.

Contacting for advice or clinical support outside of Clinic appointments:

Only very limited time is available for doctors to provide brief email replies regarding patient concerns advised outside of appointment times, for example when clients contact via admin@cdpaediatrics.com.au. Medico-legally doctors also have to be mindful of providing advice via email, as this is not regarded a secure form of communicating sensitive and clinical information to patients.

If medical or clinical advice is required, you will usually need to arrange an in-clinic or telehealth appointment. The administration team will endeavour to contact your doctor to advise them of your concerns if you contact the office between appointments, via email or phone, as soon as possible. They will seek your doctor's advice regarding making a follow-up appointment (or telehealth appointment), or alternative advice as appropriate, such as for you to seek emergency care for your child elsewhere.

As Coastal Developmental Paediatrics is a small private clinic of independent doctors, and many of the Paediatricians are only available for contact on a part-time basis, there is no capacity for provision of urgent care and there may also be a delay in responding to your email or phonecall. Please see the ‘Emergency or crisis situation’ Policy on our website for suggestions for you to access alternative urgent and acute care support options if needed.