Knox Private Hospital HMO & GP/Physician VMO Information

Located @ 262 Mountain Highway, Wantirna, VIC, 3152

333 bed hospital with mix medical, surgical, haem-onc and rehabilitation

10 bed CCU

14 bed ICU (24 hour on-site ICU fellow cover)

24 hour ED (24 hour on-site ED consultant/CMO cover)

24 hour STEMI service

I require the following prior to your first shift:

1. CV

2. Certificate of Currency for Indemnity Insurance (must cover private work)

3. WWCC

4. Vaccine Certificate

5. Super Info:

Name:

DOB:

Address:

TFN:

Fund Name:

Fund Member No:

Fund ABN:

Fund USI:

The HMO office (G30) is located in Consulting suits A, on the ground floor, below Tandarah (1st floor).

Handover from the HMO on the opposite shift occurs in the HMO office. They will hand you a generic swipe and key for the office. The swipe and key should be left in, or collected from, the top drawer of the desk if there is no one on the opposite shift.

Computer & Webpas passwords are printed out and stuck to the computer.

A mobile phone is provided to you and should be kept with you while on duty. We’ve had occasional issues with the HMO DECT phone not working so the mobile will be a secondary contact. The mobile should also be used to provide VMO’s updates regarding their patients. This can be either by text or call, and during the night or in the morning (see below).

Monday to Sunday 0700-1900 & 1900-0700 (2x 12 hours), shorter shift by negotiation. I would prefer to book HMOs in blocks but realise this may not be possible.

Hourly pay rate for this role will be communicated via email. If someone is interested in the role, please ask them to contact me.

Public Holiday rates are paid for public holiday hours only eg. If you work the night of a public holiday you will be paid public holiday rates from 2000-0000 and normal rates from 0000-0800. If you work the night before a public holiday you will be paid normal rates from 2000-0000 and public holiday rates from 0000-0800.

You are subcontracted to Victorian Medical Officers Group, a business established by Dr Jason McClure (ICU Director) and I, to provide ward HMO services.

Please note, once shifts have been confirmed by me and added to the online roster, it is your responsibility to organise any swaps with your colleagues. If you can’t find a replacement you must do the shift. This is non-negotiable.

We will cover genuine sick calls.

Each subcontractor is responsible for their own sick leave. If undertaking this work full time, you should consider suitable insurance arrangements to protect against loss of income in the event of prolonged illness.

Please submit one invoice per calendar month for shifts worked in that month. See the Invoice Submission Deadlines below.

If you send your invoice as an attachment (*doc/*xls/*pdf etc), you’ll receive an automated response confirming receipt.

Your invoice should include your business name, ABN, business address, banking details, dates and hours of work, and an invoice total. Most HMOs find it useful to include a breakdown of the superannuation and take-home components for their own records and reconciliation.

See Addendum 1 at the end of this document for an example.

Compulsory Super Guarantee (SG): all quoted rates are inclusive of SG. From 1 July 2025 the SG rate is 12%. To calculate the shift pay exclusive of SG, divide the super-inclusive shift rate by 1.12. Superannuation, where applicable, is transferred with the relevant monthly pay run as described below.

Invoice Submission Deadlines

To ensure invoices can be processed in the relevant pay run:

• Invoices for work completed in the previous calendar month must be received by the 12th of the next month. For example, the cutoff date for invoicing for shifts from August 1st–31st is September 12th.
• Payment and superannuation (if applicable) will be transferred to your respective bank and superannuation accounts on the 15th.
• Any invoices received after the 12th cutoff date will automatically roll into the following pay run.
• Continue emailing your invoice in PDF or a similar format to invoice@vmog.com.au

Correct Invoice Requirements

Invoices must be submitted correctly and fully calculated.

Invoices containing the following errors will be rejected and miss the current payment run:

• Incorrect superannuation calculations
• Incorrect extraction of super from super-inclusive hourly rates
• Incorrect GST application
• Incorrect totals or calculation errors
• Missing required details, e.g. your ABN

If errors are identified relating to total hours worked or hourly rates applied, we will provide a 24-hour window for a corrected invoice to be resubmitted. If the corrected invoice is not received within that timeframe, payment will move to the next pay cycle.

It is important that you contact your medical indemnity insurer and ensure that you have appropriate cover to private work. Please note: as you are sub-contracted to us, and not employed by the hospital, there is no indemnity cover from the hospital. Therefore, traditional employee indemnified cover may not be adequate. Please seek advice and forward evidence of cover prior to your first shift.

Working with Children Check:

A valid Victorian WWCC is required for this role. Please forward evidence of this prior to your first shift.

Code of Conduct:

From AHPRA/ the medical board:

“Good medical practice (the code) describes what is expected of all doctors registered to practise medicine in Australia. It sets out the principles that characterise good medical practice and makes explicit the standards of ethical and professional conduct expected of doctors by their professional peers and the community.”

We require that all practitioners subcontracting with us adhere to the AHPRA code of conduct and from time to time review the code to ensure compliance.

The code of conduct can be found here:

https://www.medicalboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Policies/Code-of-conduct.aspx

Safe Working Hours

I am aware that the majority of us lead busy lives and have work commitments elsewhere but we require you to adhere to safe working hours practices. Day shifts into night shifts are best avoided, except in rare circumstances such as covering a late sick call.

Similarly long continuous stretches of work are discouraged.

The national code of practice re safe working hours from the AMA can be found here:

https://ama.com.au/article/national-code-practice-hours-work-shiftwork-and-rostering-hospital-doctors

Please ensure you read and adhere to this code of conduct and safe working hours.

*you are not expected to assist in ED when they are busy, nor should you be asked to complete any admission/paperwork for any patient admitted via ED. Please let me know if this occurs.

#the VMO’s are quite varied as to what they do/don’t want to be contacted about overnight. It is therefore left up to your discretion and will depend on your experience/seniority. As a general rule any major changes to a patient’s plan should be run by the VMO either overnight, or in the morning.

Any patient who hits clinical review criteria must be discussed with the VMO either at the time, or in the morning. Please utilise the HMO mobile to text them an update. Please do not delete texts from the phone as we will use them for data collection.

Being a private institution I would advise you to err on the side of contacting the VMO if any concerns, rather than not. Any deterioration that triggers a MET call will be discussed with the VMO by the HMO or ICU Fellow (as per policy) at the time of the call.

$nursing staff should attempt these procedures prior to requesting help from the HMO.

Handover should take place in the HMO office unless there’s an unstable patient on the ward.

After handover, touch base with the coordinator to enquire as to whether there’s any patients of concern from their perspective.

If there are no urgent jobs to attend, commence rounding of the wards to complete diary/non-urgent jobs. Touch base with the ANUM/NIC on each ward and on the day shift, ask that the morning staff identify any medication charts due to expire within 48 hours and to add them to the diary for completion on subsequent rounds.

It’s my hope that once the nursing staff have become familiar with the new process, all non-urgent mediation recharts will take place during the day shift.

If a nurse contacts you via phone for a non-urgent job, please ask them to write it in the diary and gently remind them that a phone call is not required for non-urgent jobs as the HMO is constantly rounding. Let me know if you continue to receive multiple calls for non-urgent requests.

If contacted for a patient review it’s helpful to ask whether the patient is in clinical review or MET criteria so as to triage the request. MET calls/CODE’s must be attended immediately (unless at another MET then you will discuss with ICU) and patients in clinical review criteria must be seen within 30 minutes.

In each ward there is a large touchscreen showing the patient information and bed location. There are a couple of useful shortcuts here: clicking on the VMO name will bring up their contact details and clicking on the syringe brings up pathology results.

Clinical Labs Pathology is onsite 24/7.

The smaller computers in the wards have access to the internet, UTDOL, TG and eMIMS. Computer logins are available at each ward.

Radiology is onsite until 2300. Radiology can be accessed via the desktop program “intelliviewer”.

For on-call radiology (CXR/CT) or organising pathology couriers overnight, please discuss with Hospital Coordinator.

Ordering pathology and radiology are both via paper slips.

Any patient review, significant change in patient condition and/or discussion with the VMO’s must be documented in the patient notes.

All patients who hit clinical review criteria (orange on the SAGO chart) must be handed over to the VMO either at the time of review, or in the morning. When to call/text will be dependent on your level of seniority and patient’s response to treatment. However, in private medicine we suggest you err on the side of contacting VMO’s.

Examples:

You’re asked to review a patient D0 post TKJR who has no relevant medical history for an asymptomatic systolic blood pressure of 95. You undertake the usual examination and work up including bloods, ECG and VBG which are normal and you determine the patient is volume deplete secondary to fasting for surgery.

You administer a perfectly calculated bolus of IV fluids and the blood pressure improves to the patients baseline of 110 systolic. For most of us it would be reasonable to inform the VMO of this via text at ~730 in the morning. If you had any concerns about it, you might decide to discuss with the VMO on the phone at the time.

Any patient who has been the subject of a MET call must be discussed with the VMO at the time of MET call.

If you are uncertain about the management of the patient, and the patient does not fit MET criteria, please discuss with the VMO (including patients who you think may need ICU/HDU referral).

Communication with the ICU Fellow should only occur either as a result of placing a MET call/CODE blue on a patient, or via direct request for admission after discussing with the VMO. If a patient is complex, or the reason for ICU referral unclear, it’s worth requesting that the VMO contact the ICU Fellow directly.

Requests for HDU/ICU admission via the ANUM/Hospital Coordinator and where the patient does not meet MET criteria must always be discussed with the VMO first. For issues such as severe intractable pain where you need ICU advice, the best course of action is to place a MET call as this not only mobilises ICU Fellow and ANUM but Nursing Coordinator too.

For any other issues on the ward that are unable to be resolved with the VMO/nursing coordinator, please escalate to the ICU fellow.

We are aware of frequent, multiple requests to re-chart/transcribe phone medication orders from VMO's.

We recommend you decline these requests.

Firstly, a phone order remains a valid order until rescinded or formalised by the physician, so there is no risk of the patient missing out on treatment.

Secondly, unless the VMO has documented clearly in the notes any additions or alterations to usual medication regimes (including dose, route, frequency) the risk of transcription error and therefore adverse clinical outcomes is high. In the circumstance where these orders are transcribed and an error occurs, you will be liable, even if you have correctly transcribed what the nurses have written down.

When admitting a patient usual medications can be prescribed if there is a GP letter or Webster pack with full prescription information available AND a written or verbal instruction from the VMO as to which medications to prescribe. You must discuss the admission with the VMO, so please document clearly if the VMO requests alterations to a patient's usual medications.

Rewriting an already completed drug chart is acceptable.

Resting during the quiet/study period is perfectly acceptable if the circumstances on the wards allow it. If you are phoned during quiet time with any non-urgent jobs it is reasonable to ask that they be added to the diary for the morning round.

You must carry the HMO DECT phone and be contactable at all times.

Prescribing medications and therapy from the office should be avoided for all but the most simple things (eg metoclopramide), and only if the patient is stable. You must attend a patient who meets clinical review criteria. In general if a second call is received regarding an issue in the same patient, we should review the patient.

Please email me with any feedback (positive or negative) and or suggestions on how to improve the service. Thanks, Matt.

TAX INVOICE

Dr Julius J. M. Hibbert, M.D

734 Evergreen Terrace

Springfield, VIC, 3087

ABN 72 714 834 XXX

Registered for GST: N

Ph 0498 321 342

julius.hibbert@springfieldgeneralhospital.gov.au

Date: 4th October 2022

INV #: JJMH_239

INVOICE TO:

Victorian Medical Officers Group

Suite 25, 19 Bolton St

Newcastle, NSW, 2300

FOR: Locum ICU Fellow shifts worked during July 2025

Please remit payment to:

Account Name: J.J.M.Hibbert

BSB: 330 989

Account Number: 19872908x

Notes: