There is nothing worse than having a sick child in the middle of the night with no one to call and nowhere to go except the emergency department. This is even worse if you are a single parent which means you have to wake up all of your other children and load them in the car to go and wait for potentially hours in an emergency room until someone is able to help you.
Luckily things are changing and other amazing services are starting to emerge.
Two years ago we were on a family holiday at the Sunshine Coast and our middle daughter became sick and distressed really quickly one evening. It was about 9:30pm at night and we were on holidays in a place that we weren’t familiar with so we had no idea who to call or where to go except the hospital which was quite a drive away.
We felt that whatever was wrong was not a life-threatening emergency hospital kind of visit however we knew that we needed to see someone asap to get her some medication to help with the pain. We had suspected it was a quick onset of an ear infection that was causing her serious pain and she was unable to settle down.
Funnily enough after having kids for 6 years this was our first potential ear infection so we didn’t fully know if that was what was going on but we knew we needed to see someone.
I did a quick search on my mobile phone looking for options of where we could go and I kept coming across this thing called National Home Doctor Service.
In the past I had heard of doctors that came and visited you at home however I was under the impression it would cost us an arm and a leg and we only had an ear infection that we wanted to get rid of … BOOM BOOM!!
On this website it was plastered everywhere that it was bulk billed so I thought it was worth a phone call to suss it out.
After chatting to the lady on the phone she confirmed that a doctor could come to our holiday apartment within the next 90 mins to see my daughter (who was in agony by now) and it would be completely bulk billed. I was still trying to work out what the loophole was as this seemed too good to be true.
What happened next was amazing!
A doctor called my mobile phone when they were outside for me to come down to let him in. He came into our apartment, examined my daughter and confirmed that she did have an ear infection. He gave us some strong pain killers for her, some medication to get us by until the morning and a script for the next day when the chemist was open.
We did not pay a cent and to this day I still can’t believe I live in a country so lucky to have services like this when I really need them which don’t cost a thing.
I was super excited to be working with National Home Doctor Service so I could tell you about this amazing service as it truly is a godsend for parents. Having experienced it myself I would absolutely recommend it.
To let you know a little about how they work …
National Home Doctor Service is Australia’s largest after hours, doctor home visiting service. They bulk bill all patients with a Medicare card, so there’s nothing to pay for the home visit. All of the doctors who work for them are either hospital doctors or GPs. Following the home visit, a clinical report is sent to the patient’s regular GP the following day, so they’re kept in the loop. They are in all capital cities around Australia (with Darwin launching mid 2016) as well as many regional centres.
As Australia’s largest network of home visiting doctors, they provide a great alternative to bundling up children and taking them to the hospital ED for non-life threatening illnesses. As they are an afterhours medical service, they only do home visits from 6pm weeknights, 12 noon Saturdays, all day Sundays and public holidays. They treat urgent illnesses only (ie middle ear, gastro, vomiting, migraine, UTI’s and upper respiratory infections) that need to be treated by a doctor, but often occur when your GP’s closed.
They also have this fantastic App available to download to make it super easy for you the next time you need to make an appointment with them. You can find out more about the Apple App HERE and the Google App HERE …
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