Mi-Mind Centre Policies
Payment and Accounts
Informed Financial Consent (IFC)
All accounts for outpatient face to face consultations are required to be paid on the day of the consultation. Payments can be made via EFTPOS or Cash. All services require a current referral to receive a rebate from Medicare. This is not a bulk billing practice so you will incur out of pocket expenses. The Medicare Rebate can be processed electronically at the practice through our practice software. Medicare will deposit the rebate into your nominated bank account. The amount of rebate you receive will depend on if you are registered with Medicare for the Medicare Safety Net Threshold. To check registration status call 13 20 11.
For those funded by WorkCover or DVA, all accounts will be sent to the appropriate entity for payment while you have approved cover.
Fees and associated out-of-pocket costs for psychiatry and rTMS depend on individual circumstances. While we aren’t able to provide a general cost, we are happy to discuss fees with you. Please contact us via the website, or call 46 130 922.
Appointments with Mental Health Nursing are fully funded by the PHN. There are no fees involved.
Outstanding accounts
All private patient accounts are to be settled on the day. Reception will claim all rebates, where appropriate, on the same day of payment. Should a private account remain outstanding, the following day the patient will receive an SMS reminder to phone reception and make payment. Following this SMS if the account remains outstanding the patient will receive an email/letter advising the account must be settled within 14 days. All future appointments will be cancelled and may be rescheduled once the outstanding account has been settled.
Should the account not be paid in full by the due date outlined on the email/letter, it will be assumed that the patient is unable to afford the services provided by Mi-Mind Centre and their care will be terminated and transferred back to their GP. If the patient is still requesting further appointments following this transfer of care, they will need to obtain a new referral from their GP.
Appointments and Attendance
Appointment Confirmation, Cancellations and Non-attendance Policy
Mi-Mind Centre specialises in long term psychiatric care for patients committed to attending all of their appointments. This is the cornerstone of our partnership with patients to achieve their long-term goals. Should you cancel at short notice or reschedule regularly, you will not get the most benefit from our services. The treating psychiatrist may transfer a patient’s episode of care back to their General Practitioner should they cancel or reschedule two times in a row, unless there are exceptional circumstances that have been communicated to administration staff.
If you opt for SMS messages to be sent to mobiles advising of your follow up appointment time, you will need to pay particular attention to the fact that all appointments MUST be confirmed by 12pm the day before. If no confirmation is received, your appointment will be given to another patient.
If you confirm your intention to attend and then fail to attend without giving the office 24 hours’ notice or a valid exceptional circumstances reason on the day, you will be charged the full consultation fee, which will not be claimable through Medicare. No future appointments will be made until the fee is paid in full.
Follow up appointment Policy
All patients are required to have at least one follow up consultation booked following each appointment for continuity of their mental health care, unless their care is ready to be transferred back to their General Practitioner and follow up is not required by the psychiatrist. It is understood that patients may require a period of time to confirm their availability for appointments and are given a 24-hour grace period to book their future consultations.
If the patient has not contacted the Practice to schedule this appointment by this timeframe, they will be sent an initial SMS offering contact to book their follow up. If no response is received within 24 hours of this initial SMS, a final SMS will be sent. Should the patient fail to respond to these messages, reception will attempt to phone the patient to schedule a follow up appointment. If these 3 attempts of contact through different mediums (SMS & phone) have failed, the patient will be sent an email inviting them to contact the Practice to book their follow up or request for their care to be transferred back to their GP.
Patients will be given a 14-day period to make this contact after the date this letter has been sent. It will be assumed that if no response has been received within this timeframe, that the Patient would not like to continue their episode of care, and their care will be transferred back to their GP
Prescription requests outside of appointment
Please ensure that all your medications are prescribed during our consultation to last until your next appointment. If you run out of prescriptions before your next appointment, please allow 72 hours for processing your request for prescriptions. All requests should be made via email to office@mi-mindtrust.com.au or phone to our admin staff. Please note that prescription requests via voicemail will not be actioned.
A maximum supply will be prescribed until your next scheduled appointment or up to one month if you do not have a follow up appointment yet, as ongoing prescriptions require a consultation.
When requesting your ongoing prescription, please include the following information:
The full name of the medication required
The dosage of each medication
The name for your nominated pharmacy and the address (as by Law we are required to post the original prescription to the pharmacy).
If you would like your prescription posted to you, please allow time for delivery. Electronic prescriptions will be sent by SMS to your nominated phone number or emailed to your nominated pharmacy.
Administrative fees for prescriptions written outside of appointment
For repeat prescriptions for all schedule 8 (e.g. Lisdexamfetamine (Vyvanse), Concerta (Ritalin) and monitored schedule 4 medications (e.g. Clonazepam, Diazepam, Zopiclone, Zolpidem, Alprazolam, Quetiapine) a short appointment (15 minutes) would be the preferred option either in person or by video or otherwise $50.
All other schedule 4 prescriptions via different methods of prescription delivery including collect from the clinic, post, electronic prescription, and fax/email to your pharmacy cost $35.
Please note that insurance providers do not usually cover repeat prescription services. You will be invoiced directly for the prescription.
Patient Behaviour and Transfer of Care
Patient Behaviour Expectation
At Mi-Mind Centre, we provide a service and interact in a way that is respectful, caring, compassionate, lawful and within the scope of our services. It is an expectation of patients attending this practice to interact with staff and any persons in the waiting room in a manner that is polite, courteous, respectful and without discrimination. This practice adopts a zero tolerance position on behaviour, whether verbal, written or physical, that is deemed hostile, aggressive, derogative or combative. This extends to phone conversations and written correspondence. Incidences will be referred to your treating clinician who reserves the right to discharge you from their care back into the care of your referring doctor.
Transfer of Care Policy and procedures
To provide guidelines for staff to determine when and how to end a patient’s episode of care appropriately by the treating psychiatrist before transitioning or transferring their care back to their treating General Practitioner.
This policy is in place to ensure patients have a safe and seamless continuity of their mental health care.
Privacy and communication
Mi-Mind Centre Privacy Policy
Patient privacy is vital to the doctor/patient relationship at Mi-Mind Centre. We collect personal and health information from you primarily to provide quality mental health care.
We also use the information you provide in the following other ways including:
Administrative purposes in running our psychiatric practice.
Billing purposes, including audits and compliance with Medicare and Health Insurance Commission requirements and Health Funds and other relevant third-party requirements.
Disclosure to others involved in your health care including treating doctors and specialists outside this psychiatric practice. This may occur through referral to other doctors, or for medical tests and in the reports or results returned to us following the referrals and through letters we send to your referring doctor or to concerned third parties.
Disclosure to other doctors, community mental health nurses and locums in the practice, trainee psychiatrists/doctor and medical students attached to the practice for the purpose of patient care, teaching and quality assurance activities.
De-identified data for research purposes.
De-identified data for specialist peer review activities with consultant specialists in specialist peer review group/s I belong.
Your records are kept in secure and safe location. Computer records hold your demographic, billing, medical and doctor correspondence details.
The use of AI technology for note taking purposes. The system is compliant with the Australian Privacy Principles. The purpose is to create better notes, provide safer care and to be able to fully engage with you during your consultations. If you wish to opt out of the use of this technology, please advise your doctor at the beginning of your consultation. You may revoke your consent to the use of this technology at any time.
Use of email for communication.
We sometimes use email to communicate with patients and understand it is not inherently secure or confidential. Before sending any information via email, we ask patients to verify their email using a link sent from our medical records software. We’ll do this with you in person, so we know we’re sending information to your email.
Once verified, any email we send has all sensitive information stored in a password protected attachment. No sensitive information will be sent unencrypted in the email body itself. Any sensitive or personal information will be sent using our medical records software and will be password protected.
Heidi Health Privacy Policy
Andrea Boros-Lavack is now using highly secure AI technology from Heidi Health to assist with medical note-taking. The system is compliant with the Australian Privacy Principles. The purpose is to create better notes, provide safer care and to be able to fully engage with you during your consultations. If you wish to opt out of the use of this technology, please advise your doctor at the beginning of your consultation. You may revoke your consent to the use of this technology at any time.
For more information, please visit www.heidihealth.com/au