In the event of an emergency, practice team members may need to communicate with other health services and organisations including local hospitals, nearby practices, primary care facilities, government health departments and, as mentioned earlier, PHNs.
Practice team members may need to access referral and discharge papers or seek assistance from other organisations due to capacity issues. To ensure that communications can occur quickly, create a list of nearby health services. Healthdirect Australia’s Service Finder tool can be used to help you to create your list.
Take action
- Create and print out a list of all your key contacts. An example of what this could look like can be found below.
- Keep your contact list in a secure place at reception for easy access during an emergency, ensuring all practice team members know how to access it. A copy of this emergency contact list should ideally also be stored in your practice’s emergency kit, and your Emergency Coordinator may wish to keep a laminated, pocket-sized version.
- Keep your list up to date. It should contain all relevant key contact information (i.e. account numbers/details, specific contact names if required) to help ensure communications with your contacts are as quick and smooth as possible.
- Your list should include alternative methods of communication including phone, mobile, and any alternative methods in case of outages or congestion of networks that may occur in emergencies.
Example:
Key contacts
|
Organisation name
|
|
Service
(i.e., internet provider)
|
|
Contact details
[include specific contact name(s) if applicable]
|
|
Further details
[include account number/name where applicable]
|
|