Appointments_

Fees, Cancellations,
Scripts, Reports
& More.

ALL consults are by phone.
Children are not required to attend these appointments.

We will call your mobile at the time of your appointment. Consults will start/end on time. It is a busy clinic.


— NDIS Children —

Parents of NDIS funded children are welcome - they are the bulk of our clinic. Please contact us to make arrangements - we need to understand your child’s diagnosis, NDIS goals and budget for clinical nutrition and dietetic services. All appointments are 45-60mins.

Appointments are usually invoiced for 1.0 to 1.5 hours, which includes up to a 60min appointment and up to 30mins of preparation, patient notes, planning and follow-up. Additional fees are charged at our normal hourly rate if additional follow-up time is required.

Please note that up to 40-60 percent of our annual fees are for lab report analysis, food journal analysis, nutrition assessment, preparation and management of nutrition scripts, dietary planning and coordinated care planning with other therapists. All letters, reports and other desktop work are invoiced at our hourly rate.


— SELF MANAGED —

If you are NDIS SELF MANAGED, we will send a payment to your phone (up to $295 per hour, from 01 JAN 2023). We will also send you a payment URL and invoice to your email.

NOTE — at time of confirming your booking we will invoice you $295 for set-up and early review of the initial files you send to us as there is considerable work involved in setting up children with highly complex needs in our clinic.. This is non-refundable, so please ensure you send the requested files (we will send you instructions via email at the time of booking).

All “Self Managed” participant invoices need to be paid within 7 days or future appointments, nutrition scripts and reports are cancelled; these will then need to be rescheduled.

NOTE: we no longer send reminders to chase down late payments. We ask all parents and guardians to be prompt with payment of invoices.

Also please note that report fees need to be paid before we deliver reports. All letters, reports and other desktop work are invoiced at our hourly rate.

No exceptions please. Chasing late payments significantly reduces our time for other children with high needs. The daily demand on the clinic is extremely high, so managing our time well to support families is very important for us.

— PLAN MANAGED —

If you are NDIS PLAN MANAGED, we will directly invoice your plan manager at standard NDIS plan managed rates set by NDIA (this is currently $193.99/hr).

NOTE — at time of confirming your booking we will invoice you up to 1.5hrs for initial set-up and early review of the files you send to us as there is considerable work involved in setting up children with highly complex needs in our clinic. This is non-refundable, so please ensure you send the requested files (we will send you instructions via email at the time of booking).

All invoices need to be paid by plan managers within 14 days or future appointments and scheduled reports are cancelled.

Also please note that report fees need to be paid before we deliver reports. All letters, reports and other desktop work are invoiced at our hourly rate.

— PRIVATE PATIENTS —

All private appointments are 45-60mins @$295. Additional work is also $295/hr.

NOTE — first appointments require payment of $395 at time of booking. We will send you an invoice to your phone - you will have 24hrs to make payment to secure your booking. This fee is NOT refundable, so please be confident about your availability.

Please note all policies below apply to private fee-paying families. In particular note the policies below for Cancellations, Late Arrivals and Late Fees.

We provide care to patients with complex needs. To support your financial planning, please expect several appointments for us to assess, diagnose and get an initial plan set up for you.

There might be lab tests involved which we will discuss with you. We charge our regular hourly rate for time spent on analysis of lab tests, reviewing other reports and for nutrition assessment.

We also charge the equivalent of approx. 2 hours for Essential Nutrition Supports Plans, and/or to support your meal planning for clinical diets with multiple restrictions and requirements. All letters, reports and other desktop work are invoiced at our hourly rate.

Private care for kids with complex needs can be expensive as it often involves 2-3 hours of treatment per month. Please be sure you have discussed this with us and have the necessary budget set aside for our clinic’s fees.

— ENHANCED PRIMARY CARE (Medicare) PLANS —

We generally do not accept GP Management Plans or Enhanced Primary Care Plans, only by rare exception. Unfortunately, these Medicare plans are only for small rebates ($53.80) applied to 1-5 appointments. This does not suit the complex or specialist care we provide in this clinic. For most children this means 20-30hrs of care per year for appointments, nutrition scripts and feeding therapy.

NOTE: there will be a private gap fee of $245 per appointment.

During each appointment we take payment over the pone for the gap fee (have your payment card ready).

— EATING DISORDER SCHEME (Medicare) PLANS —

Children on Medicare funded Eating Disorder Plans (EDS) are also welcome to request bookings (see your GP or Paediatrician first). These entitle your child to 20 dietitian appointments with Medicare funded rebates. Please contact us to make arrangements once your doctor has given you approval. All appointments are 45-60mins.

NOTE: there will be a private gap fee of $245 per appointment.

During each appointment we take payment over the pone for the gap fee (have your payment card ready).

— CANCELLATIONS POLICY —

PLEASE READ IN FULL

Please note, all no-shows or late cancellations will be billed for the appointment.

For NDIS clients, if you cancel within 2 full working days before the day of your appointment, you can claim your fees from your NDIS budget.

For all families (NDIS and private), we ask you to also plan ahead and provide us at least 28 days (4 weeks) notice if you need to cancel or change an appointment. In situations where we get late cancellations inside this period of notice, we will keep the scheduled time to work on reviewing files, updating clinical notes and coordinating with other team members; a standard invoice will be sent for our time.

Even though we have a waitlist, we find parents are already heavily scheduled and we cannot easily fill appointments cancelled within two or three weeks. It has a significant impact on our practice and it leaves other families without support who are in need of urgent assistance.

If families repeatedly cancel with short notice, we may cancel future appointments so that other families who are on our waitlist can get support they need.

We appreciate that sometimes parents may not want an appointment due to other commitments (e.g. school holidays, work, family events, other planned appointments) or slow progress at home, although this is why we have our cancellation policy in place.., and it is why we ask every parent to agree to our cancellation policy (or not) in the New Patient Inquiry form before their very first appointment.

The cancellation policy helps us to prevent a very significant issue with the "last minute cancellation culture" which has become increasingly problematic over recent years.

We have currently got a long waitlist, so it affects our capacity to support families with kids who are in high need, as late cancellations mean we cannot predict whether we can accommodate new kids into our schedule. We need to be able to offer most new children/families a predictable 2-3hrs per month for the year ahead.

It's a very fine balance for us, which is why we have our cancellation policy in place and why we have also gone to some considerable length here online, to explain our reasoning for it. This is what we ask every parent to read in advance, and agree to, in the New Patient Inquiry form. We also reference it in every appointment confirmation email and SMS.

This means families need to take some responsibility for planning ahead. We are willing to book appointments in many months ahead so that families feel they have benefited by securing time in our schedule to provide the support they need. However, this also equally means planning at least a month ahead if you need to cancel appointments.

Many thanks for your understanding.

— LATE ARRIVALS —

Please note, if you are more than 10minutes late for your appointment (and have not provided us with notice) we will assume you are not available. We will move on to focus on other necessary work and therefore will often not be available to respond to late calls.


— LATE FEES —

Please note, if you have an invoice that has not been paid on time, we cancel future appointments and reports. We have ZERO TOLERANCE for the late payment of fees; it means constantly chasing down payments from those who do not pay on time.

If fees are overdue, we may not proceed with work previously agreed until invoices and late fees are paid - this may affect Nutrition Scripts, Nutrition Treatment Plans, NDIS reports, or other work until late fees are paid. If fees are overdue and then eventually paid, we will require payments before your future appointments to avoid overdue/unpaid invoices.

If fees are so late that your invoice expires and we need to re-issue another invoice, you will be billed pro-rata for our time (this means late fees are usually about $100 per each 20minutes required to follow-up parents and reclaim fees owed). Therefore, we ask everyone to pay on time.

Please be courteous and respectful. Make sure you have no overdue invoices or late fees so we can get reports to you and spend our time focusing on children rather than chasing late payments. Thank you.

— ZERO TOLERANCE —

All private fees are expected to be paid on the same day, or Self Managed NDIS fees within 7 days, or Plan Managed NDIS fees within 14 days.

— FEE CHANGES —

Fee rates may be updated regularly. All parents should check this website every January for updates to fee rates for Private Patients and NDIS Self Managed participants. There may also be other changes to your fee rates throughout each year.

However, the fees for NDIS “Plan Managed” participants are set and regulated by NDIA; we update these only when revised by NDIA.

— Responding to Patient EMAILS —

We have tried our very best to respond to questions in emails, SMS and voicemails, but we cannot always keep up with the huge load of questions that arrive most days. Sorry. Sometimes parents send long messages with many files. Please note that we may invoice for our time reviewing and responding to messages as this can take up a considerable part of our day.

— LABORATORY TESTS —

Some tests can be ordered via your doctor and are covered by Medicare. Other tests are not covered by Medicare and will need to be paid privately.

We always provide copies of lab test results, although some tests are not shared until the time of your appointment with a clinician.

This is because some tests have very technical information that need clinical interpretation and context. Some tests might also reveal significant news that people can find distressing.

Therefore, at our clinic, if you don’t get a test result before your consult, you will always get it at (or after) the appointment. We are keen for parents to get a copy of these test results so they can keep them on file for the long term, and share with other clinicians who also have the skills to read them.

Whilst routine pathology results are often shared instantly, our policy (like most practices in Australia) is to share other specialist lab tests (urine biochemistry, metabolic screening, organic acids analysis and other blood, stool, genetic) at the time of a consult or shortly afterwards. Please be aware of this policy.

— NUTRITION PRESCRIPTIONS —

Nutrition Prescriptions for oral nutrition support (ONS) products (specialist formulas, micronutrients, prebiotics and other nutraceuticals) are often an important part of our treatment for children with complex feeding problems.

Nutrition Prescriptions are only valid for up to 3 months. If we are not monitoring children through appointments at least once per every 3 months, we may pause access to nutrition prescriptions until a review has happened. We do this to ensure safety and effectiveness for each child. This is especially important in children with complex and changing needs.