Health Hub   >   Telehealth   >   Article   >   How to Find and Book a Telehealth Service

How to Find and Book a Telehealth Service

To combat the spread of the coronavirus and to give the people of Australia access to healthcare without having to violate social distancing, the Australian Government has made telehealth available to all. With few exceptions, telehealth appointments are bulk billed. For most people, telehealth is a new service and technology they’re unfamiliar with, but finding and booking a telehealth appointment couldn’t be easier.

Finding a telehealth appointment

There are two ways you can search for telehealth appointments on MyHealth1st. If you navigate to myhealth1st.com.au, to the top left you will see a green box with the header “Telehealth is now available!”. 

There is a toggle at the bottom of the box labelled “Show only telehealth appointments”. By flipping that toggle on, you can search exclusively for telehealth appointments. Unlike physical appointments, you can book telehealth appointments with healthcare providers anywhere in Australia.

Say, for example, you want to book a telehealth appointment with a psychologist simply type psychologist in the search field followed by your suburb or postcode. You can choose either video telehealth or phone telehealth for your search. It's as simple as that.

After you click search you will be presented with a list of available psychologists as well as a number of buttons that allow you to refine your search.

Your search will then bring up a list of practitioners accepting telehealth appointments, filtered by their next available appointment slot.

If you don’t want to use the toggle every time you search for a telehealth appointment, bookmark telehealthclinics.com.au , Australia’s leading telehealth portal.

Booking a telehealth appointment

Booking a telehealth appointment through MyHealth1st is almost identical to booking a face to face appointment with the only major difference coming with the confirmation email. 

Rather than the confirmation email containing the time and location of the booking, for telehealth appointments, the confirmation email will contain the time of the appointment and contact details for the appointment. With the fully integrated MyHealth1st telehealth service, you will receive an email with a link taking you to your appointment. The link in the email only goes live 10 minutes before the appointment is scheduled and is unique to you, ensuring that your appointment remains private. 

Author

Daniel Wilks

Daniel Wilks has worked with words for almost all of his working life, as a journalist, content producer, podcaster, playwright and even comic book author. After completing a Bachelor of Theatre degree majoring in script writing and dramaturgy, Daniel went on to complete a Master of Professional Writing degree at the University of Technology, Sydney. Since that time, Daniel has written for and edited a number of magazines and websites in the tech, gaming, and pop-culture space, across all manner of topics, ranging from film and music reviews to investigative pieces detailing corporate malfeasance. 

A family history of mental health issues and other health problems experienced by his extended family prompted Daniel to leave tech journalism and embark on a career helping people better understand their health so they can more readily access the help they need. Daniel joined the team at MyHealth1st at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, a time that people needed easy access to healthcare and accurate health information more than ever. 

Read more from this author

Related content

Group Created with Sketch.

What is Telehealth?

Telehealth has been all over the media of late thanks to sweeping government reforms allowing Medicare rebates for telehealth services and for GPs and other specialists to be able to work from home while delivering telehealth consultations. That’s all well and good but all these articles fail to answer a few very important questions - what is telehealth and why should you use it?

Group Created with Sketch.

What Kind of Services are Available Through Telehealth?

Thanks to a new $1.1 billion coronavirus program and changes to Medicare allowing for all telehealth consults to be bulk-billed, Australians have a brand new way of connecting with medical services. From March 13 to September 20 (end date subject to change depending on the progress of COVID-19), all telehealth services can be bulk billed with no additional gap payment. Practices can choose to charge a full fee for telehealth services which are not refundable through Medicare. 

Group Created with Sketch.

How the EasyTelehealth Service Works

Thanks to the Australian government’s $1.1 billion coronavirus program, telehealth is now available to all Australians, not just those living in remote areas. While most video conferencing software, such as Skype or Zoom, is suitable for telehealth appointments, they are not without their problems. Aside from requiring having to download and set up one or more third party programs, most platforms have some issues when it comes to security. It’s possible for third parties to access or interrupt telehealth consults using third party programs.

Group Created with Sketch.

Mental Health in the Time of COVID-19

The physical health impacts of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are well known, as is the economic impact. Mandatory working from home, social distancing, the closure of businesses and cutting of jobs are all a tangible effect of the pandemic. Something less visible is the impact the pandemic can have on your mental health.

Looking for a health expert near you?

Health Hub   >   Telehealth   >   Article   >   How to Find and Book a Telehealth Service