We will be closing for 2 weeks during the Christmas Period to let our hard working staff have a rest and recuperate with family. We will close on Friday 20th December at 4pm, reopen on Monday 6th January. Please order your prescriptions well in advance to cater for this closure.
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
The XBB COVID-19 vaccine is now available at our clinic from today. The XBB vaccine is more effective against more recent subvariants of COVID-19 in New Zealand.
The vaccine will be funded for these eligible groups:
everyone aged 30 years and over
people aged 16-29 who are pregnant
people aged 12-29 at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
Please call and book in with the nurse to have this vaccine.
A phone nurse is available from 9-12 Monday to Friday. Please call within these hours if you would like to talk to the nurse. On Monday and Friday mornings the nurses are busy so expect to be waiting. If the issue is not urgent - it may be easier to call on Tuesday-Thursday when wait times are shorter.
As directed by Medical Council of New Zealand Good prescribing practice - doctors must review all prescriptions on a regular basis to ensure the prescription remains appropriate. This means that all patients must be reviewed at least annually, sometimes more frequently, for all prescription medication. Please do not be offended if you are requested to make an appointment for your repeat prescription renewal - it is to ensure safe prescribing.
If you have any fever, runny nose, cough, sore throat, rash, diarrhoea or vomiting please tell staff and you will be booked in the portacom clinic. Please wear a mask to your appointment.
Phone consults are available if you do not need to come into the medical centre for examination. For any consult requiring an examination (e.g. listening to the chest, examination of an abdomen) you will be required to be seen in person. Please talk to reception if you are unsure if your appointment needs to be in person or over the phone. Standard fees apply for all phone consults.
Yes! Our priority is to keep you safe. Even if you have respiratory symptoms, we will still see you. Our staff will be wearing PPE and you will be seen either in our portacom or carpark. When you book your appointment, please tell our receptionist and they will book you accordingly. Remember to wear a mask to your appointment. This is to keep both our staff and patients safe.
If you are coughing, sneezing, or have a runny nose - you are still contagious and spreading germs. Even if it isn't Covid, we still want to protect our staff and other patients from becoming infected from any respiratory infection. If anyone were to be infected and develop respiratory symptoms, it means they would need to stop work, isolate and have a covid swab themselves.
Surgical masks are an important public health measure and offer better protection than fabric masks. It is difficult to maintain social distancing within our clinic, amongst staff and other patients. To protect all, we have decided to continue wearing masks regardless of the current alert levels. This is to maintain good public health measures and protect our vulnerable.
The easiest way to have access to your result is to sign up to our portal, Health 365. This will give you access to all your results online. Generally, no news is good news. We do not generally contact you if your results are normal. If there is anything in your results that needs to be discussed - your doctor may contact you directly or through the nurse to either discuss or to arrange an appointment to go through things. We also have a phone nurse available from 9 - 12 to help discuss results.
The easiest way to order a repeat prescription is online via our portal, Health 365. Alternatively, you can call up to request a repeat prescription. Your enrolled doctor will review your request and either send your prescription to your allocated pharmacy or ask you to come in for a review. They will email you when it is completed. Please make sure we have your email address. Alternatively, the doctor or nurse may call or text you. There is a charge for this service, due to the time and work involved from reception, nurse and doctor. It takes up to 48 hours to complete a request - you can pay an additional surcharge if needing it urgently the same day. Please visit our fees page for more information. As directed by Medical Council of New Zealand Good prescribing practice - doctors must review all prescriptions on a regular basis to ensure the prescription remains appropriate. This means that all patients must be reviewed at least annually, sometimes more frequently, for all prescription medication. Please do not be offended if you are requested to make an appointment for your repeat prescription renewal - it is to ensure safe prescribing.
All staff at the clinic have access to all your medical notes which means there will always be continuity of care.
ACC unfortunately does not cover all costs of a General Practitioner visit, unlike in some A+M or Emergency services. Therefore, there is a surcharge for all ACC consults. Please refer to our fees page for more information.
All doctors offer virtual consults. These can be done via phone, or video through doxyme. The doctor will email you a link to doxyme at the time of your consult. If the doctor feels it will be better to see you in person, they will advise you at the time. This may be necessary, for instance listening to your chest, examine inside your ears, seeing a rash in person.
We can administer liquid nitrogen at our clinic. All doctors and nurses are qualified in doing so. If a nurse is to administer liquid nitrogen to a skin lesion, it needs to be reviewed initially by a doctor before it can be administered. Please book with a doctor initially.
You can pay your invoice either in person or online. If paying online our bank account is ASB bank 12-3100-0201858-00. Account name Titirangi Medical Centre Ltd. Please use your invoice number or NHI as a reference code. Payment is expected at time of contact and any late payment incurs a $5/month late payment fee.
Please call and cancel an appointment if you do not need it. We are often fully booked and appointment times could have been used for another patient. If you miss your appointment and do not call to let us know before 2 hours of your appointment, you will be charged the full amount.
We appreciate all feedback, good and bad. Please talk to your GP or practice manager who will be happy to listen and guide you through this process.