FAQ’s
Arrange for a GP or other Medical specialist referral to be either emailed, faxed orsent via Healthlink (ID – perthcdc).
Complete the Policy, Consent and Pre-assessment forms online or download, print, complete and email us.
Call to book an appointment.
Provide any available correspondence from other professionals related to your child’s assessment and management in the past.
If you do not provide us a valid referral on the date of the appointment, then we can not assist you to claim the Medicare rebate part of your appointment fees and the whole fees would be charged out of pocket.
Usually a referral from a GP is valid for a year from the first appointment, but a referral from another Specialist is valid for 3 months only. You would have to provide a fresh referral once your previous one has expired in order for you to continue to claim Medicare rebate.
Ideally it would be desirable for both parents to attend the appointment along with your child. If you do not have anyone to mind the siblings then you can bring them to the appointment as well.
You can make the doctor aware about this, so that things can be either discussed discretely or one of the parents can be allowed to sit with the child in the waiting room.
Any previous correspondence from other professionals working with your child in the past, previous school reports, letters from school explaining the difficulties your child is facing at school, pictures or videos of your child depicting their difficulties.
Usually the first complex appointment 45 min, while the subsequent two would be for approximately 20 min. These three appointments are meant to be for assessment. After this, the subsequent appointments are usually for approximately 15 min each. The 6 week check appointments are also for approximately 15 min.
The doctor would ask you questions related to your child’s strengths and difficulties, family and social history, history about birth and perinatal events, developmental milestones, past medical history, school and academics, sleep, appetite, energy levels, screen time, etc. During the appointments, the doctor would undertake certain assessments like
Grifftiths 3 assessment – for assessing your child’s development in different domains like speech, fine motor, gross motor, social and foundations of learning.
WRAT 5 assessment – screening test for Specific Learning Disorder.
ASD diagnostic interviewing.
The doctor would also perform a quick general and systemic examination of your child if they comply. The doctor may elect to send you online questionnaires to you and the child’s teachers. The email with the links for these questionnaires would be sent to you. Kindly ensure that you forward the teachers questionnaire link on to your child’s teacher and request them to complete it preferably before the next appointment.
Kindly let your child know that we are going to see a specialist who could possibly help them deal with the things they are struggling with and try to make things easy. We would be discussing several things about you, few things which they are really good at and few things they are struggling with. It is normal to have difficulties as everyone has their own weakness and strengths which make us unique. However, whatever we are going to discuss is not to criticise or blame them.
Unfortunately, the doctor needs to ask you some personal or intimidating questions to have a reasonable understanding about your child’s environment and behaviour. However, you can let them know if you are uncomfortable in discussing certain things about yourself or your family situations.
Behaviour is a fluid entity as it changes with time, environment, surroundings, mood, hunger, and sleep etc. It can be difficult to establish rapport and get good understanding from appointments less than an hour in a formal kind of environment. Hence, the doctor would constantly observe your child’s behaviour in the background while speaking with you and sometimes they would purposefully be funny, rude or difficult to your child or sometimes get into their personal space to see how your child responds, reacts or carries themselves. Kindly do not get the doctor wrong while they are doing this
Kindly inform us at least two working days before the appointment date if you wish to cancel or postpone the appointment to avoid getting charged cancellation charges. These charges are placed because we want to ensure that the other patients waiting for the appointment do not miss out on the potential availability of an earlier spot.
Yes, a report is ideally sent to the GP or the referrer and a copy of it would also be sent to you. The report would be ready in two weeks time of finalising the diagnosis and management plan.
Yes, the doctor can provide you with a school letter stating your child’s difficulties, diagnosis, medications, along with recommendations and strategies to assist them.
It is completely natural to sometimes not agree with the outcome of the assessment. However, it is more important to communicate this with the doctor so that both parties can at least ‘agree to disagree’. This is because we can not proceed forward if the doctor and yourself are working in different directions. Once the disagreement is communicated then we can at least start working at things which we agree upon with. Always remember that the basic goal is to make things better for your child. You also can seek a second opinion from another doctor if disagreement could not be resolved.
The schedule of the doctor charges can be discussed with the secretary
Yes, you would receive Medicare rebate for all the appointments with a Paediatrician, but the gap is an out of pocket expense for you. In order to ensure you receive the Medicare rebate a valid referral from GP or other professional is mandatory.
Yes, this is an option which can be used to see the doctor if you live remotely. However, this appointment needs to be done on a platform which enables video communication like zoom. We can provide you with the login id and password for the same.
You would need to see the doctor over at least two, if not more sessions during initial appointments in order for the doctor to come up with a suitable diagnosis and a management plan. This is more applicable to certain diagnoses like ASD and ADHD. Subsequently, it may take a few appointments for the doctor to find the right medication and right dosage for your child. Subsequently, the doctor would be able to advise you how often they need to see you. For children with ADHD who require regular scripts, the doctor would usually provide you with a script covering 6 months of medications and would advise you to see every 6 monthly. We would encourage you to get back to us earlier if any concerns.
Yes, you can attend to discuss management plans if your child is unwell or too anxious.
Stimulant medications are used for ADHD as are Non-stimulant medications. Stimulant medication prescription is supervised by PBS and the doctor needs to call them each time while writing a script to obtain the authority number. These scripts are usually held by pharmacies and you need to go to the pharmacy each time to obtain the repeats. The pharmacist may initially call the doctor to confirm the script is genuine. Kindly note that the doctor can supply a script covering you for a maximum of 6 months of medications and the script would expire by 6 months after the initial lot is dispensed.
Kindly return the medications back to the pharmacy if you have them in excess as it is illegal to stock these types of medications and you may be prosecuted for the same.
The doctor can do no gap appointments for simple scripts or other paperworks. However, we may have to charge you $ 50 if you do not want to attend an appointment for the same.
However, kindly note that authority scripts need to be done after an appointment.
We try our best to fit you on days where the doctor does not do his clinic. Kindly remember that we do not provide emergency or critical services at Perth CDC. We would encourage you to seek urgent service by either calling an ambulance or visiting the Emergency department of PCH depending on the type of emergency.
Unfortunately, different professionals work on different days of the week. We endeavour to respond to your calls promptly but sometimes the clinic can be busy or the concerned professional is not available onsite to answer your query immediately. We would encourage
you to leave a voicemail message and an email about your queries and we would get back to you as soon as possible. Kindly, allow sufficient time for us to get back to you.
You either email us or Leave your feedback on our website.Your complements would encourage our team to keep on delivering quality and timely service to families and their children in future. Your complaints would assist us to improvise on your services.