Referrals
Our doctors are able to see patients with or without a referral from a doctor. However, patients without a valid referral will not be eligible for any Medicare rebates or Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA) payments for consultations and treatments.
Referrals from your GP are valid for 12 months, whereas referrals from specialists are valid for 3 months. Please note that we do NOT accept indefinite referrals. An updated GP referral is required every 12 months to ensure we have the most updated information about your health and medications as safe and best practice policy.
Patients without a Medicare card e.g. diplomats, expatriates and overseas patients, do not usually require a referral for appointments although we strongly advise to involve your GP in shared medical care through an initial referral.
Our doctors do not provide Work Cover consultations or assessments. Please note that we are currently not accepting new DVA referrals.
Appointment guide and policy
Running appointments on time benefits everyone. We respectfully ask that you adhere to our appointment policy so that we can run appointments efficiently and on time as courtesy and respect to all patients.
The time allocated for a standard consultation is usually only adequate for one skin issue to be addressed properly. Complex problems or additional concerns you may wish to discuss cannot always be addressed during the same consultation and will usually require a separate appointment to ensure optimal time is allocated for proper discussion and medical care.
Consultations that exceed the duration of a standard appointment (more than 15 minutes) will be charged an extended consultation fee.
Dr Yip is one of the very few dermatologists in Australia who is an alopecia subspecialty expert. Hair loss problems are booked as a Hair Consultation (up to 22 minutes) as these are usually complex or are referred for tertiary opinion, and require more expertise and/or time.
Cancellation policy
You will receive a phone call or an SMS to confirm your appointment 2-3 days before your scheduled appointment. If we do not receive confirmation from you within 48 hours, your appointment will be cancelled and offered to another patient on our waiting list.
Appointment availability is usually oversubscribed, and missed appointments deny us the opportunity to help other patients. If you do not require your appointment, please ring to inform us about your cancellation. Just like other small businesses, there are significant staff overheads and running costs for our small practice to cover including for non-attendance of booked appointments. Therefore, a fee of $100 may be charged for missed appointments or last minute cancellations of less than 48 hours’ notice, barring exceptional circumstances. A replacement appointment will not be offered for missed appointments in most cases.
Professional fees and payment policy
Every effort is made to ensure that our professional fees are fair and structured to reflect the level of expertise and time required to provide you with the best standards of specialist care.
As this is a private practice, please note that we do not bulk bill and we are unable to accept new DVA cardholder patients. Therefore, all consultations and procedures will involve out-of-pocket costs. We regret that we are unable to offer discounts to pensioners and Healthcare cardholders. Medicare rebates have not risen in recent years and we do not receive any government subsidy to cover our substantial and continually rising costs of operation to provide you with quality private healthcare.
As a guide, the consultation fee for a new standard appointment is $315 (Medicare rebate $81.30), and for a new extended appointment is $525 (Medicare rebate $81.30).
All new hair loss consultations range between $495-545 (Medicare rebate $81.30), depending on the complexity of the issue.
Further services or procedures e.g. skin biopsy, steroid injections, cryotherapy (freezing) etc will attract additional fees. Larger procedures will usually be quoted at the time of booking.
All payments must be settled on the day of your consultation and treatments. Accepted methods of payment are cash and Visa/MasterCard debit or credit cards. Please note that card transaction fees apply (Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards 0.75%, EFTPOS 0.10%). We do not accept AMEX.
If you are not in the position or would prefer not to pay private consulting and treatment fees, please let your referring doctor know as there is the option of referring you to a public hospital dermatology clinic. However, the waiting list for appointments at public clinics may be substantially longer and there is much less flexibility with appointments and choice of doctors.
If we are running late
The nature of medicine dictates that doctors never know what will come through our door - every patient and every problem is unique.
We make every effort to run appointments on time but delays are possible due to unavoidable patient circumstances, such as the need to attend to an acutely unwell patient, or an urgent excision of a melanoma. "Catch up" slots are allocated between appointments to factor in emergencies or urgent procedures that require more time. If your appointment time is delayed, thank you for understanding that this is likely because there is a sicker patient ahead of you who require more medical attention. Rest assured that the same high standard of care will also be offered to you should you ever require similar attention.
We appreciate your kindness and respect shown to our staff and other patients at all times.
Please ring 45 minutes ahead of your appointment time to check if appointments are running to time if this is a concern.