Fee update
It is with regret that TMC would like to advise you of some changes to our fees that you may notice moving forward from 1st October 2024, in line with other medical centres.
Along with other businesses and medical centres, we are struggling with significantly increasing costs. As we are sure many of you will be aware, the government is not increasing our funding sufficiently meaning we are forced to look at ways of trying to cover the lack of funding so our medical centre can continue to operate.
Up until now, many of the services we provide, in particular spending an increasing amount of time on medical administration and advice outside of booked appointments, have not been charged for.
Moving forward, we will be implementing charges for this work.
Some examples of this include:
- Referral letters completed outside of the consultation
- Phone or email health advice from your GP
- Phone or email health advice from your nurse (please note you can view your results on Health365. Please discuss with reception if you are not signed up)
- Follow-up work handed over from other health professionals such as from specialist appointments or hospital discharges
- Follow-up of test results by your nurse or GP
- Paperwork such as reports, medical certificates outside of the consultation
In addition, you will notice clinical staff charging correctly for extended consultation time taken (noting a single consultation is 15 minutes and only one problem or two small problems).
It is a last resort for us to have to increase the services that we charge for. We know households are struggling with increased costs of living.
We strongly encourage you to write to our minister of health, Dr Shane Reti and your local MP to express your concern with the inadequate funding of primary care which means we have to increase fees we change in order to keep our practice open.
We appreciate your support of our hardworking staff