FAQ

Enrolment for both casual and registered patients is quite easy. You can either:

- enrol online or

- print a manual enrolment form and bring it to us or

- pop into our practice to fill out a manual enrolment form

Once you have registered with us, in most instances you can see our GP as soon as an appointment is available.

It can take 7-10 days for your previous GP to send through your notes, but in many instances old notes are not required for the first appointment especially if it is urgent. 

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We send a welcome email to all patients once you have registered, explaining this in detail. 

Even though the notes are not always needed for the first appointment, we do encourage patients to confirm notes transfer from their old practice as it brings through any chronic blood test results, xray reports and previous hospital admission notes which are needed for long term care.

We have both male and female GPs at the practice. The availability of appointment with the clinician of your preference is based on how far ahead you call for the appointment.

We have a limited number of acute appointments available everyday for emergencies. These are based on clinical triage and availability. If you call earlier in the day or if you are triaged by the nurse as needing an urgent appointment we will try our best to give you an earlier appointment.

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Please note that we monitor any misuse of urgent/acute appointments to ensure people with appropriate urgent needs are prioritised.

You can reschedule or cancel your appointment without a fee if it is MORE THAN 12 hours from the appointment.

If it is less than 12 hours notice, we charge a full fee equivalent to your appointment charge - this means if you are a Visitor you will be charged at a visitor rate, if you are a Casual patient you will be charged at a Casual rate, if you are Enrolled with us you will be charged at your standard rate. Children are charged $19.50 for missed appointments (before 5pm) and $34.50 after 5pm for missed appointments.

This is to ensure that people aren't blocking appointments and cancelling last minute preventing other patients from taking up appointments. It can be hard for us to fill the appointments last minute and adds significant administrative load on our team if you cancel less than 12 hours before your appointment. 

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You can reschedule or cancel by either calling our reception on 07 44 44 181 or by emailing us on commercestreet@gooddoctor.co.nz 

Our appointments are usually booked at 15 minute intervals. The first 10 minutes of the appointment are for the consult to discuss history, conduct examination and diagnose the symptoms. The last 5 minute of the consult are for paperwork related to the consult including blood test ordering, medication scripts, referrals etc. 

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If you are a new patient you will usually see a nurse before you see the GP to get your height, weight, BP etc done.

Our team strives to be on time and we expect patients to be on time too. In a 15 minute appointment, if you are 5 minutes late you have already lost 1/3rd of your time with the doctor. So we encourage everyone to come on time and even a bit early to avoid any last minute delays in parking, traffic etc.

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If you are more than 7 minutes late to the appointment, you will have to reschedule for another day and you will be charged full fee for the missed appointment and any rescheduled appointment.

We take our fees before you enter the consult room. In the past we have been very accommodating and have let patients avail services before paying but have had to chase thousands of dollars of debt, as often people don't end up paying for these appointments after their consult. We now have a blanket policy where everyone must pay BEFORE the consult on the day of the appointment. No exceptions.

If you are unable to pay on the day, your appointment will be rescheduled, and you will have to pay for the missed appointment and the new appointment. 

Unfortunately, we can only see one person in a consult. It takes quite a bit of time for the clinician to write their notes even for minor issues due to compliance. Please book a separate appointment for family members including children.

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If you are just wanting a script and the family member is registered here, you can just request the script online here.

We don't send text message where the appointment is booked on the same day.

If your appointment is booked in advance, we do send text reminder 12 hours before your appointment, however all digital systems can fail. The responsibility of attending the appointment lies with the patient. If you miss an appointment because you haven't received a text message, you will still be charged for missed appointment. We therefore request people to write down their appointment date and time on their phone or on a piece of paper. We also have appointment reminder cards we write this down on if you book at our reception.

Please note that our doctors and nurses work on strict 15 minute cycles of consults. Once you have walked out of the room, the consult is over. If you have forgotten to ask the doctor about a symptom, medical certificate, blood test or a referral, there is likely to be a surcharge for this as this again eats into our clinicians' paperwork time. 

We encourage patients to contact us early for any requests as last minute requests are likely to be declined.

Most people on stable conditions should know when the next script or blood test is due and when the next WINZ medical or ACC is for renewal.

The standard time for us to process out of consult paperwork is 7-10 days based on priority. If you need out of consult paperwork done sooner than this we review this on a case by case basis and there is usually a surcharge for express service - we will advise you of this before carrying out your request.

We understand that cold/cough/flu symptoms can have significant impact on people's health and often leads to people needing time away from work or school. If you have cold/flu/cough symptoms we encourage you to fill out our Winter Illness Triage Form as this is the fastest way for us to triage your symptoms and offer you appropriate advice. 

If you just need a repeat script, most of the times you can just request your script online through our website.

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If you are a new patient and have never seen us before, or if your last appointment was more than 6months ago, we might request you to book a face to face appointment first.

Most of the scripts we do are sent directly to the pharmacy. Because of this we don't print any paper scripts. You just need to go the pharmacy you wanted the scripts sent to and they will have the electronic script.

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If you have checked with the pharmacy and the script has not been successfully received due to a software issue, please let us know and we will check and resend the script.

We prioritise scripts based on urgency as we process hundreds of scripts in a week.

If you have requested a 5 day script, please don't go to the pharmacy before 5 full days to get the script. If you want the script sooner, please choose the appropriate option when requesting and pay for that urgency. We will not be able to do your script in 48hours if you have requested and paid for a 5 day script.

All Pathlab forms are electronic. If the doctor has already told you to get a test, you just need to pop into any of the Pathlabs in Waikato and tell them your name - they will have the electronic form which is usually valid from 12 months of ordering.

1) We use Pay By Link to request payment for our services like script charges and phone appointments. This link is sent to you through a secure SMS or email. When you click the link it provides you the whole invoice with details on how to pay directly from your phone or browser. This is our preferred method as it balances your account in real-time.

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2) You can also pay for your overdue account by a direct bank transfer.  Please make sure to provide the name of the patient in the reference field of your bank transfer and to also email us a screenshot of your payment.