FEES

Fee Schedules

Kon-Tiki Medical Centre is a local family owned, private medical facility.
Our focus is to achieve healthy communities and deliver quality care for our patients.

Kon-Tiki Medical Centre is glad to be able to participate in boosting our community’s health and wellbeing.

We endeavour to still bulk bill certain Medicare funded services for our long-term eligible patients. We bulk bill eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Annual Health assessments Heart Health Assessments, Chronic Disease Management Plans and Tertiary Care plan Arrangements for organising multi-disciplinary team and allied health involvement for chronic diseases (Asthma, COPD, Arthritis, Diabetes, Cancer patients), Seniors and Veterans Health Assessments Annually for all eligible patients, over 75’s Driver’s Licence medicals of known eligible patients.

The Practice Fees charged for each consultation and procedure is at the individual independent medical practitioners/ your doctor’s discretion. The fair fees for the services provided are utilised towards staff payroll, maintaining medical rooms and services to provide high quality care and medical consultations from our facility. Billing types relies upon the patient’s medical presentation and services required and provided by your doctor at the time of consultation.

The fee schedule listed below is a guide only.

Against all the odds of the pandemic strains, floods, housing crisis, war, inflation surges and global recession! We strive to keep our doors open and maintain high standards of medical care and availability of all services we can provide to the community. Revised fees schedule June 2024.

As a gratitude to the community and our patronising patients. With the rising inflation rates globally, COVID pandemic struggles, staff shortages and needed rises in payroll awards rates for the employees, persistent rises n CPI’s (consumer prices index), costs to maintain infrastructure and with little change in covering the costs of all the above from Medicare rebates. Withstanding against multiple corporate medical businesses flourishing rapidly surrounding us, Kon-Tiki Medical Centre has reviewed the needs for our patients and the community. We wish to keep the health of our community in good shape as our priority. Post thorough review of all the scenarios, we are going to focus on your health and enhance our services further. Our Fees Schedule is structured in a way to ascertain easy access to health care for all patient presenting to the facility and can present for medical care with full trust for themselves and their loved ones. We are not an online telehealth or instascript services. Appropriate medical consultations are required to consult with your doctor.

We aim to achieve highest quality medical care for our patients and have tried to design this information page to help patients know what to expect, when you visit Kon-Tiki Medical Centre. Payments of your consultations are required to be completed at time of your appointment.

Please note an extra $20 account holding fees will apply if consultation was not pain on the day.

Please use Direct DEBIT card for transactions, as the TYRO transaction machine can assist with patient’s getting their Medicare rebates on the day when full practice fee requested, rebates are processed back to patient on tyro machine on their debit card, if your doctor chooses to do Mixed billing for you, for that day.

We are not government health funded acute care clinic.
We are not a 100% Bulk billing centre.
When your doctor opts to bulk bill the consult, doctor will get the consult rebate directly from Medicare for the service provided to the patient for the day.
Some services like: occupational health, Workcover consults, insurance-related assessments and paperwork are not covered by Medicare.

Nil rebates apply to Out-of-pocket fees or any non-Medicare rebate-eligible services.

Kon-Tiki Medical Centre has tried to elaborate and explain the fee structure in a fair and transparent manner, as much as possible. Please feel free to ask your doctor directly at your appointment if any further questions arise.

Last minute Phone/ Emails/ “Quick chats” and off-site discussion requests with your doctor
Most medical issues are best dealt with a face-to-face consultation with your GP. Because our doctors are usually consulting with patients throughout the scheduled appointments of the day. Doctors are unable to entertain unbooked patient communication requests via phone or email. We kindly encourage you to schedule an appropriate appointment at your convenient time if you need to discuss issues with your doctor. Kon-Tiki Medical Centre will not be attending to and will not be able to take responsibility of communications through phone and email correspondence requests. Please book a telehealth consult, if required, however, these need to be booked as per the eligibility check by your doctor and will be charged in accordance with our fee schedule as per your doctor’s discretion. If you elect to make a telehealth appointment, please be aware that some conditions may still require a subsequent face-to-face consultation.

Prescriptions and Prescription Refills (requests from patient and their pharmacies)
All script requests deem to need an appropriate consultation with your regular doctor, as this enables your doctor to properly monitor your health and check the medical condition for which the script is being written out by them at that time. These scripts are NOT given out by the medical centre; Kon-Tiki Medical Centre cannot generate scripts for patients. It is your doctors that provides advice for the appropriate medication, for the presenting medical condition for you at that time. Please ensure you and your pharmacy manage your scripts to ensure you don’t run out of your essential prescriptions. Please request DMMR and Regular medication reviews with your GP to assist with regulations and dispensing of your medication in timely fashion.

Drugs of dependence prescribing policy
For your safety, our doctors will not prescribe S4 and S8 drugs or drugs of dependence to New patients or New patient telehealth appointments. Please do not book an appointment with our Doctors for Just refilling S8 scripts as new patients. You will still need to pay the fee to the consultation, despite your requested S8 script not being dispensed by the GP at that time.

Medical certificates
Patients need to have a consultation with a regular Doctor to obtain a medical certificate. By law we are not permitted to backdate medical certificates. To avoid further fees and/or delays, if you require a medical certificate, please ask at the time of your consultation.

Referrals
Writing a comprehensive referral takes time which is why a consultation is required. The consultation enables your GP to compile an up-to-date medical history, examination and other information about your condition which will help you and your specialist to assist the continuity of care. A referral letter written by your GP is a legal document that enables you to claim benefits from Medicare Rebate, so it is important that you obtain your referral before your specialist appointment. It is illegal to backdate referrals or to write one without first having had a consultation with the patient. We understand that our Fees schedule may not be favourable to all patients. Please ask your doctor for more details on fees prior to booking your next appointment. For Kon-Tiki Medical Centre to be able to maintain high accreditation standards, medical equipment and services, a fee will be applicable. Fees schedule is adapted after stringent reviews and structured after keeping in mind all factors applicable. Especially, to maintain continuity of care for all patients, without jeopardising the financial means required to keep a medical centre open and running effectively.

Accessing your health records
Patients have the right to apply for access to information held in your health records under the Administrative Access Scheme. To apply for access please request in writing. When seeking access to your health information, you will need to provide evidence of your identity. Specific details on the requirements for evidence of identity, as well as evidence of authorisation ( consent) where an application is made by an agent ( lawyer/ solicitor) on an applicant’s behalf.

Decision-making timeframes
Administrative Access applications are generally processed within 20 to 28 business days. An application under the Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld), we will endeavour to process within 25 business days, unless a further specified period has been agreed to by the Applicant. Extensions to the processing time can be applied if the applicant agrees and/or does not pay the RTI and applicable administrative fees.

Accessing other people’s health records
If you want to access someone else’s records (e.g. a relative’s), and you do not have or are unable to obtain their consent, you will need to make an application under the Right to Information Act 2009 (Qld).

Fees and charges
There is no application fees for requesting.
There is a Processing and Administration fees. Fees for processing and administration charges for applications are calculated keeping administrative time, IT, insurance, data indemnity and insurance, OAIC regulations, Workcover and AMA fees in consideration and estimated under the Information Privacy Act 2009 depending on the volume of information requested for release. The average release of records at consent and request verification is estimated at around $550 to $750. Depending on size and time spent on collation of files.

Please request your pathology, imaging and specialist correspondence directly from the relevant providers to avoid requesting results and specialist correspondence requests from the centre. Allowing avoiding applicable administrative fees.

Thank you for your understanding.

How this GP illustrated Medicare’s four-decade slide

(source) https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/how-this-gp-illustrated-medicare-s-four-decade-sli