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After Hours Doctor is a fully accredited emergency after hours General Practice offering surgery consultations and home visits
to the patients of subscribing general practitioners (GPs) on weekends, weeknights and public holidays. This is the only such service
in Tasmania and enjoys excellent relations with General Practice.
The service's central clinic is well located in the northern suburbs of Hobart , around 10 minutes from the city centre, and offers
surgery consultations and home visits to patients living within the greater Hobart area. Over 80% of Hobart GPs contract the service
on either a part-time or regular basis to attend their patients out of normal business hours.
The purpose-built and well-equipped clinic which is open from 9:00 am – 10:00 pm Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays, and every
weeknight from 6:00 pm – 10:00 p.m includes a minor procedures room and continuous access to pathology. An after
hours pharmacy is located directly opposite the clinic.
Over the years the After Hours Doctor clinic has become a well-known access point for patients seeking after hours care and,
being community-located and ‘focused’ on delivering after hours services only, offers obvious advantages to a
‘co-located’ clinic on a less accessible central hospital site. After Hours Doctor discourages attendances by
patients for “routine” purposes, returning patients to their own doctor for non-urgent care.
After Hours Doctor enjoys close working relations with other emergency service providers in Southern Tasmania, including the
public and private Departments of Emergency Medicine, the Ambulance Service, nursing homes and local community services.
After Hours Doctor is fully accredited by AGPAL according to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP)
standards. After Hours Doctor is also accredited by the RACGP for the purposes of ‘special skills’ training in
General Practice.
After Hours Doctor works alongside its sister organisation GP Assist (Tasmania). GP Assist (Tasmania)
offers nurse triage and doctor advice to patients of participating GPs throughout the whole of Tasmania with the objective of
‘filtering’ after hours calls in such a way as to reduce the workload on rural practitioners. Whilst After Hours
Doctor can not provide face to face services in rural areas, patient triage by GP Assist (Tasmania) has been shown
to reduce after hours calls for rural GPs by up to 80%. Most of the doctors working with After Hours Doctor also work at
times providing telephone triage through GP Assist (Tasmania).
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