Cairns...

Cairns 24 Hour Medical Centre
We are located on the corner of Florence and Grafton Streets in the city of Cairns, Tropical North Queensland. We have 12-24 contracted Doctors consulting from these premises and providing seven day, 24 hour General Practice consulting, emergency medicines, employment and industrial examinations, plus commercial and recreational diving examinations.

Cairns is a major North Queensland tourist destination with a permanent population of 125,000 and more than  750,000 International visitors and 1 Million Domestic visitors to Tropical North Queensland.

The Cairns district supports a sugarcane and shipbuilding industry and a wide range of ancillary services and light industrial sector that supports a remote urban community of this size.

There is an International Airport and large general aviation sector that services both local and outpost areas including Papua New Guinea.

The patient base for the 24 Hour Medical Centre is widespread but generally toward a younger category as represented by the tourism and backpacker industry, the dive medicals and the transient Australian patient clientele.

The practice actively markets within the hotel and tourism industry and as such has the facilities for dealing with overseas patients. We employ full time Japanese translators and twelve languages are spoken within the practice.Z

Facilities
The facilities at the Medical Centre include six consulting rooms, four dedicated treatment rooms, an audio room and a large waiting and reception area. Some undercover parking is available and all rooms are wheelchair accessible. Public toilets are on site.

A chemist is in the same building, as is QML Pathology and the Cairns Day Surgery Unit. The chemist operates extended hours seven days a week to support our service.

The nearest radiology service is 600 metres away and there are two hospitals - one public and one private - within a few kilometres.

The clinic is equipped to handle General Practice emergencies and routine investigations. Facilities include

Spirometry
Audiometry and Tympanometry
Operative Microscope
Electrocardiograph
Defibrillator
Liquid Nitrogen
Hyfrecation
Nebulisers
Oxygen

For the management of wounds each treatment room is equipped with suturing and full autoclave facilities are on site.

Services
Reminder System
Our practice is committed to preventative care. We issue reminder notices offering preventative health services where appropriate. The patients have a choice to be involved in this service.

Appointments
We encourage patients to phone ahead to make an appointment. This enables the Doctor of their choice to be seen if available or to determine their rostered availability. We request that patients tell us the urgency of their needs. Most Doctors can be seen on the day of the appointment request. Patients do not need an appointment to be seen, and "walk-in" patients can request a specific Doctor if they are available.                 
                                                                                                  

We have also recently initiated the role of a dedicated Customer Service officer to be at our Front Desk at all times. This was instigated to help improve our Customer Service and to ensure that any problems advised to us by our patients, are dealt with efficiently and effectively.

Female or male Doctors are available by request, as are Doctors speaking a specific language - we cover most from Japanese to Russian.

When patients make an appointment or request to be seen we ask if they have any specific needs - longer consultation time, Doctors with specific skills, etc. Our routine booking slot is fifteen minutes.

Waiting Times
We make every effort to see patients on time and we appreciate our patients taking the same care. Unfortunately, due to emergencies and sometimes extended consultations, the doctors may run late. We extend to patients the opportunity to see another Doctor if the Doctor they requested is running late or on an emergency call.

Continuity Of Care
It is often necessary for patients to have follow-up appointments so that we can monitor their treatment appropriate to their care. Our practice prefers to be totally responsible for managing patients' problems. Many people do not realise that 'shopping around' from doctor to doctor may be a disadvantage. We request that patients phone early in the day to help with continuity of care and access to the Doctor of their choice. The Doctors also visit private patients in hospital and visit nursing homes.

Home & Hotel Visits
We are happy to do home visits where appropriate. We request patients to come to the surgery where possible as we do have the facilities there not available on home visits. The time for availability of a Home or Hotel visit is made upon the Doctors appointment schedule. We try our best to get them to you in the quickest time possible. Our Home & Hotel visits are not direct billed to Medicare, and a fee is charged on the basis of how far away the patient is located and what the medical complaint is.

Telephone Calls
We try to keep interruptions during a consultation to a minimum, as they can be very distracting to both the Doctor and Patient. Most queries are best dealt with by consultation, therefore our general response to a medical matter over the phone is that our reception staff cannot answer is to come in and see the doctor.

Prescription Requests
We rarely provide these without consultation. Our policy is that the patient is asked to see a Doctor.

Payment Procedures
Our Medical Centre bulk bills. All patients who currently hold a valid Medicare card can be bulk billed direct to Medicare. Anyone without must pay a consultation fee. Medicare covers general consultations, however for any visits with the General Practitioner that does not cover an illness, such as any Pre-employment, dive medicals, etc, a fee applies.

Fees are to be paid on the day of the consultation.

Privacy
This practice is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of patients' personal health information. It is the policy of this practice to maintain security of personal health information at all times and to ensure that this information is only available to authorised members of staff.

Patient Feedback
From time to time this practice conducts surveys in the form of a questionnaire to obtain consumer input into the running of the practice. These surveys are completely confidential and help us to improve our services.

We encourage patient feedback and to this end we have a Senior Doctor available to discuss areas of concern with a patient at all times. We also provide information on how to contact us by mail and also how to have a problem dealt with by the various available bodies including the Health Rights Commission.