Cancellation Policy & Fees
Your booking is made subject to our POLICIES REGARDING:
Bookings, Fees & Cancellations Privacy, Respect and Trust, Fee Payment, Communication with and Contact.
Bookings should only be sought and accepted in good faith and with a firm intention.
You should intend to attend with your child and not expect that the appointment will need to be cancelled. We understand that other important events and engagements may later arise, but ask that you provide as much notice as possible if you need to cancel or reschedule.
You should only accept an appointment if you able and happy to engage with your doctor and their Prosper Paediatrics reception team in agreement with their advised policies, terms, conditions, booking requirements and fees.
The requirements for delivery of private paediatric medical services are complex and shaped by the unique challenges of providing healthcare to children combined with regulatory, medico-legal and financial constraints. We trust that you will keep in mind that booking and managing appointments involve administrative costs.
Your appointment is time reserved & managed in your provider’s appointment book at your request.
Please ensure you carefully read and keep any Booking Email sent to you.
We ask that you keep the booking commitment in mind.
We also ask that you promptly respond to any phone calls, emails or SMS from the practice concerning your appointment.
We hope you also appreciate that any request for cancellation and rescheduling creates extra costs.
We trust you understand that most families prefer as much notice as possible of offered appointments and hope that you provide as much notice as possible of cancellations.
Cancellation Fees
A Cancellation Fee is charged for all appointments that are not attended by your child or cancelled with insufficient notice (less than 16 business hours). Your child must attend their appointment fully to allow their doctor to interact with, examine and observe them sufficiently for clinical requirements and in line with Medicare rules.
Notice of at least 16 business hours before the appointment is required to avoid a fee.
The 16 business hours requirement is counted back from the start time of your appointment, but only over business weekdays.
For example, if you have a Monday appointment at 10 am, please notify us by 10 am on the prior Thursday.
Our reception is normally open between 9.00 am and 5.00 pm on weekdays except for public holidays and Christmas to New Year.
It is the patient’s or parents’ responsibility to ensure that we receive and understand the notice of cancellation.
Notice should be provided by email or by speaking with a staff member. Notice given by voicemail will only be accepted if a clear message is left and no technical issue prevents our receipt of notice.
When an appointment is cancelled, we send an email confirming this.
Why this policy
Cancelling or rescheduling with sufficient time allows us to offer the time to other waiting families. Families need time to plan their attendance, and offering appointments with very short notice creates significant stress. Short notice makes it difficult for the practitioner to plan their time. Providers have limited time for clinics, and a non-attended appointment is never recoverable. Significant administrative costs are incurred in appointment booking and management, provision of new patient information, cancellation list management, and file setup services. These costs, together with the additional costs incurred by late cancellation or non-attendance, will be unfunded unless a fee is charged to help mitigate this expense and ensure fairness to other families.
Cancellation fees-how much?
Your provider’s Cancellation Fees are set out in their Fee Schedule and a link to that Schedule is provided in the Booking Email. Cancellation Fees are inclusive of GST and not rebateable by Medicare. The fee is normally billed but may be waived by the Manager for exceptional circumstances (see below), provided good faith is evident and only at the Manager’s discretion.
Booking Fee deposit:
A deposit equivalent to the expected gap may be required for any subsequent bookings in the following circumstances relating to any child in the family who is a patient of any associated provider:
where there have been previous late cancellations or non-attendance without notice regarding any appointments for children in the family;
where a New Patient appointment is not attended or cancelled with insufficient notice;
where a parent engages in or has previously engaged in argumentation about any Cancellation Fees or Deposit requirements;
where a parent’s good faith is not indicated, or they have not followed the Respect & Trust Policy
and
This deposit will be applied to the payment of the appointment fee if your child attends. However, if the appointment is not attended or cancelled with insufficient notice, the deposit will be converted to a non-refundable and non-rebated Cancellation Fee, inclusive of GST.
Relevant considerations for waiver of the Cancellation Fee
There may be extenuating circumstances when short notice cancellations may be unavoidable for unforeseen reasons and where even giving notice of the non-attendance is impossible. In these cases, we encourage you to contact reception staff as soon as possible to advise the Practice Manager of your situation. Work requests, taking a holiday, changes to social or parenting arrangements, school activities, inconvenience, changed priorities or failure to obtain a referral in time, for example, will not be considered sufficient to waive a Cancellation Fee.
The appointment should be kept on Video if you are suffering mild viral symptoms and your doctor agrees this will be clinically useful.
The Respect and Trust Policy applies. Reception staff do not have the authority to waive a late cancellation fee. Staff will be happy to note and advise any circumstances that the Manager may wish to consider as an exceptional reason to later waive the fee. The late cancellation policy, like all the policies, has been developed in consultation with your provider. The manager administers this policy on behalf of your provider and if needed in a particular situation, and at the discretion of the manager, in consultation with them.
How to avoid a Fee for an unattended appointment
Carefully read and save your Booking Emails and schedule your appointment in your calendar or planner. A reminder booking Email is sent about 72 hours before the appointment. If you wish to cancel or reschedule, this will be the moment to do so to avoid a fee. If you book an appointment and do not receive a Booking Email within 12 hours, please email to request this, as it may have been overlooked.
An SMS reminder is sent about 48 hours before the appointment as a courtesy and because busy parents sometimes forget about appointments. If you wish to cancel, please do so immediately to avoid a fee. It is best to notify us by email. If this is not possible, please call us and leave a voice mail if we cannot attend your call immediately. Do not seek to cancel by SMS Reply as this will probably be missed and result in a late cancellation fee..
Replying to our SMS with “Y” lets us know that you have not forgotten, are planning to attend, and have checked the appointment's date and time.
If you do not reply with a confirming “Y”, reception staff must allocate significant extra time and resources to contact you to clarify the situation.
We take our commitment to hold your booking seriously. We do not re-book the time that has been allocated to you unless we are confident you will not be attending. We are very aware of those on our Cancellation List who need an earlier appointment, but we also want to avoid stress for them with very last-minute offers.