When you undertake a home visit (and some telehealth), you are eligible to claim a rebate from Medicare. If working in a 100% bulk billing service, this is the only money you are paid. For a private billing service like Night Doctor, an additional (out-of-pocket) gap fee is paid by the patient which substantially increases your earnings for each patient that you see.

You can. We charge all patients a gap as standard (unless they are a veteran with DVA Gold cover) and this substantially boosts your income. However, you can choose to bulk bill any patient – this is entirely your discretion.

No. Some bulk billing services might tell you this, but it’s not true! In fact, unfortunately, we are regularly having to turn patients away. There are a few things you should know:

• We have by far the best reputation out of the home visiting services in Perth (see our Google reviews to see what patients think about us); there are many patients that are happy to pay for a high quality service.
• Over the last couple of years there has been a substantial reduction in the availability of after hours home visit services in Perth, following the closure of multiple services, the last closure being DoctorDoctor in December 2021. Reduced availability of other services has significantly increased demand for our service.
• If patients are unable or unwilling to pay, rather than simply turn these patients away, we offer these cases out to our doctors, who can choose to bulk bill them for a home visit. Whilst most patients are willing to pay a gap you do have the option of bulk billing if you choose, giving you the best of both worlds.

No, it’s entirely your choice. All patients undergo a COVID screen before being booked. If you do choose to visit a potential or confirmed COVID case, you have access to full PPE. You also have the option to offer a telehealth appointment as an alternative means of consulting the patient.

Yes you can. We offer mixed home visit and telehealth shifts as well as telehealth-only shifts that you can work from home. Telehealth allows our doctors to manage many conditions, including patients who are COVID contacts are in quarantine or have COVID symptoms, and as a private billing service, you will earn great telehealth rates.

You will be managing acute presentations that are commonly seen in General Practice or the lower acuity area of the Emergency Department

Night Doctor is an urgent care service rather than a General Practice service. You will not be managing patient’s chronic health conditions, and in fact, regulations require that you stay away from managing chronic conditions and instead refer patients back to their regular GP if this is required.

For conditions that require ongoing management, you will either refer to the regular GP, or to the Emergency Department if more urgent investigations and management are required.

A GP is available at all times for clinical support. You are never alone and you will up-skill significantly during your time at Night Doctor. Support is provided over the phone, over video, or using pictures (e.g. a rash query), depending on the clinical situation.

After hours has a history of some services and doctors undertaking non-compliant billing practises, which has tarnished the industry. This is extremely unfortunate, as most GPs do not work after hours and are reliant on an industry that has imploded as the result of rorting billing practises. This has been bad for doctors and bad for patients.

Unfortunately, some inappropriate billing practises continue to be promoted to this day by some services and so you should understand your obligations under Medicare and choose to work for a service that actively promotes Medicare compliance processes.

There are several things to be aware of. Firstly, you should always be in charge of your billing decisions; avoid working for services that make billing decisions for you.

Beware of services that bill urgent items for all patients that are reviewed after hours. Medicare certainly do not believe all after hours presentations are urgent and after many years of experience providing after hours care, we don’t either.

Documentation is key for Medicare compliance; most doctors fall foul of Medicare because they have not documented appropriately. Therefore you need to work for a service that has adequate triaging procedures and allow you to document your billing decisions.

All of our processes are designed with compliance in mind.

First and foremost we are a private billing service. This removes any incentive to bill inappropriately as there is no reliance on claiming high dollar rebates from Medicare to earn a great income.

It is important that you understand your obligations before undertaking work and claiming from Medicare, so we provide comprehensive and transparent information to our doctors during the onboarding process.

Our app puts your in control of your own billings and makes compliance simple and efficient, by allowing you to triage your own patients (which is required by Medicare to determine correct billing decisions), select the correct billings items that apply to your patients and ensure you are providing adequate documentation, as required by Medicare.