Your general practitioner (GP) or any specialist from the Townsville University Hospital or other hospital may refer you to our service. The referral form can be accessed on our website and printed referral pads have been made available to hospitals and GP practices.
Heartstation is one of the community-based cardiac diagnostic services that is utilised by GP’s and specialists for timely provision of certain tests. We provide the same service as the Townsville University Hospital would, also at no cost (bulk-billed), with the results being sent back to your referring physician for follow up.
No, you will not need see a doctor at our practice. Your referral will be for a cardiac service (either echocardiogram, holter monitor or ambulatory BP monitor), the results of which will then be reviewed and reported by one of our heart specialists (cardiologists). Final reports will be sent back to your referring physician for you to follow-up with.
In the case of echocardiography and holter monitoring, the service will be bulk-billed to medicare, with no cost to you. **Please note that you MUST hold a valid Medicare card in order to be bulk-billed. There will however be a small fee of $50 for ambulatory BP monitoring, as unfortunately this service is not covered by Medicare. This fee must be paid in cash as there is no EFTPOS facility available.
Yes, if visiting our practice for the first time, a “New Patient Form” will need to be completed. Please bring along your valid Medicare card (essential), pension card and DVA card, if you have one.
There are no wait lists for our services. Referrals are triaged by urgency and booked as they come in. Please note that we MUST have received a referral in order to book an appointment for you.
If you have not been contacted within a week of receiving your referral, please contact our friendly administrative staff on 0439 965 562 or reception@heartstation.com.au
This happens fairly often as doctors sometimes refer to multiple practices in order to try and get the service provided sooner. If you are contacted by us for an appointment and you think you may have already had the test done elsewhere, please don’t be afraid or hesitate to question it. We do not want to repeat a test unnecessarily (which then has ramifications with Medicare). Inform our administrative staff on what the test involved and whereabouts it was performed, and we can follow up on it.
Yes, we do have some parking on the ground level adjacent to the clinic. At 36 Fulham Road, you will enter our driveway and find parking. The Heartstation entrance opens directly on to Fulham Road. On busy clinic days, parking may be full and in that case, there is some street parking (be aware of time limits) or the Mater Hospital has a new multi-storey car park directly across the road, which can be accessed via Diprose Street (fee applies).
