Proud to provide care for all, at every point in their life.

Your First Appointment

Maxwell Medical Group is open 6 days a week. Please make an appointment by clicking ‘book your appointment’ above or by contacting us on: (03) 7036 2450.

At your first visit your GP wants to get to know you and to develop an understanding of your health needs. To do this they need to take a detailed history of your medical conditions, regular medications and current medical problem. Good care can’t be rushed and for this reason ideally your first visit at the clinic will be a longer appointment for your GP to gather all the relevant information about you. Following this appointment, it would be helpful to have your medical history transferred to your GP at Maxwell Medical Group so that they can better understand your overall health. Any member of our practice administrative team will be able to help you with this.

COVID 19 Update

2020 was a difficult year with all of the struggles that came with the COVID 19 global pandemic. Victoria has done an amazing job at reducing the numbers in our state but it is important to remain vigilant about COVID 19.

As a result of the pandemic, GPs have had to change and adapt the way we work in order to still be able to provide care to our patients. We ask that if you have any symptoms such as cough, fever, runny nose or sore throat that you please first contact a member of our admin team for advice before booking an appointment. Whilst we do not provide COVID testing at our clinic we will be able to give you advice about where to get tested.

Out of surgery visits

Maxwell Medical Group do not routinely provide out of surgery visits, however, they are available at the discretion of your treating general practitioner.

Walk In appointments

There are a limited number of walk in appointments available daily at Maxwell Medical Group. Please speak to a member of the practice team if you need to be seen

Transcription Software

Some of the GPs use transcription software to aid with note writing and record keeping. More information about this technology can be found here.

Out of Hours Care

In the event of an emergency please call 000.

If you require medical care out-with the opening hours of the practice, please call DoctorDoctor on 13 26 60.

Complaints & Feedback

We value your opinion and views and see complaints and feedback as an opportunity for us to learn and improve our practice. If you have any concerns, complaints or feedback please let us know either by speaking to the practice manager or one of the medical directors within Maxwell Medical or in writing. Please address any correspondence to:

Practice Manager
Maxwell Medical Group
Central West Shopping Centre
T22, 65-67 Ashley Street
Braybrook, VIC 3019

You also have the option of raising your concerns with an external agency. For any complaint about privacy and confidentiality or about access to personal information you can contact:

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Facsimile: +61 2 9284 9666
Phone: 1300 363 992.
Post: GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001

For any complaint about health care service or delivery you can contact:

The Health Complaints Commissioner
Call 1300 582 113 between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday
Level 26, 570 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000
https://hcc.vic.gov.au/make-complaint

Communication Policy

There are different ways in which we communicate with our patients and third parties. These include:

Telephone

You are able to contact our practice via telephone from 8am until 6pm Monday to Friday and from 9am until 12 noon on a Saturday. When your call is answered by a member of our practice team some information needs to be gathered in order for us to deal with your concern appropriately. This may include some questions about your identification (we are required to ask for three points of identification every time we speak to you) and some questions about potential symptoms of, or exposure to Covid-19. We appreciate your patience and assistance with this. These questions help us to determine who can best assist you with your concern. If you feel your matter is urgent, or of a clinical nature, please make this known to the person dealing with your call. In these situations, your call may be passed to the practice nurse to help.

Phone calls from anyone requesting to speak to the doctor are generally not put through at the time of the call. This is to avoid disruption to the doctors, and the patient, as they are in consultation. If you feel your matter cannot wait, please hang up and dial 000. Doctors will strive to return any phone calls which are urgent within 24 hours.

All correspondence will be documented in the patient health record.

SMS

We send SMS messages for a variety of health management purposes.

These may include:

• Appointment reminders – a reminder message will be sent the day prior to your appointment.

• Health reminders (eg: cervical screening/care plans etc)

• Health recalls (eg: follow up of test results)

We need to ensure that your mobile number is up to date at each visit to ensure that this information is sent to the correct number. Patients must be aware that if another person can access their mobile phone then the confidentiality of these communications cannot be protected by the practice.

Please let us know if any of your contact details change straight away or if you would like to opt out of this service.

Email

We cannot guarantee that email is a secure form of communication, however, our IT specialists endeavour to maintain the security of information contained within email wherever possible. Whilst we make every effort to keep your information secure it is important for patients to be aware of the risks associated with electronic communication, in that the information could potentially be compromised and accessed by someone other than the intended recipient.  We can still email you information with your consent, if you wish. Please note we do not provide consultation services via email, or any kind of clinical advice. We do not offer repeat prescriptions or referrals via email. We do not use email as a form of communication for any urgent matters. Patients must be aware that any communication they direct to the surgery via email is also NOT secure and confidentiality cannot be guaranteed. Patients communicating through email do so at their own risk.

If you do choose to contact the surgery via email this will be considered as patient consent to reply via email.

We endeavour to reply to all emails within 2-3 business day. Our emails are checked on a regular basis, however they are not constantly monitored. If you have an issue that requires urgent attention we request that you contact the practice via telephone.

Fax

We use secure fax as a form of communication, generally between ourselves and other healthcare providers. Faxes received that are patient related are imported directly into the patient’s file and sent to the relevant GPs inbox to be actioned. Any urgent patient related faxes are handed to the doctor the same day or if that doctor is not available another doctor in the practice will review the fax. All non-patient related faxes are given to the relevant staff member.

All outgoing faxes will be accompanied with a practice cover sheet advising details of who the fax is addressed to, fax number, number of pages and confidentiality and privacy notice.

Letters

We do use letters as a form of communication. We use Australia post to facilitate this method of communication. We may write to you about reminders, results that are outstanding and notification about your health if you have decided to opt out of SMS communication. We may also write to update you about any changes in the practice including services we offer.

Mail received by the practice is checked daily Monday-Saturday. Our admin team process all mail and distribute to the relevant staff member. Any clinical information is scanned into the patient record and sent to the GP’s inbox to be actioned. All feedback, human resources and finance related correspondence is directed to the practice manager.

Please ensure you inform us of any change of address; if you fail to do so we cannot guarantee the safety of your clinical information or timely communication regarding your health.

Website

We post updates here on the practice website about any changes to the practice, including changes to the practice opening hours, service fees or staffing changes. Please check the website regularly to keep up to date. You can book appointments through our website using the ‘book you appointment’ buttons but you are not able to contact the practice directly via the website, this must be via telephone or email or in person.

Facebook & Instagram

We do post updates on Facebook and Instagram regularly about health and about changes to the practice. Please do not use social media as a form of communication as we do not check this regularly.

Results & Reminders

Whenever you have any investigations we ask that you please book a follow up appointment within one week to discuss the results. If a GP receives results which are abnormal and need to be dealt with urgently, your GP our one of the nurses will try to contact you as soon as possible to discuss the results. They will normally try to contact you by phone so please let us know if your telephone number changes. If they cannot reach you by telephone they may try to reach you by other means.

When reviewing your results your GP will highlight any that are abnormal which can be dealt with on a non urgent basis (within two weeks). If this happens you will receive an SMS asking you to book an appointment. You will then receive a further two reminders at 48 hours intervals.

Sometimes your GP or nurse will add reminders to your record for blood tests, cervical screening tests, DEXA scans or other health events. When the time comes for these tests you will receive an SMS two weeks before, then two further reminders at weekly intervals.

If you would like to opt out of health reminders please let a member of the practice team know.

Frequently Asked Questions