All Medicare-eligible consultations are bulk billed for patients with a valid Medicare card. Some items, including privately purchased vaccines and consumables, attract a fee.
Port Stephens is a small place with a large catchment — retirees and young families, tradespeople and shift workers, and a population that swells every summer. This practice was set up to look after all of it, seven days a week, without cost being the thing that stops someone booking.
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GPs
Male and female doctors, with interests across every part of family medicine.
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Days a week
Including weekends and public holidays, because illness keeps no calendar.
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Languages
Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Farsi, Russian, Spanish, Dari and more.
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Caring here since
Opened in Salamander Bay Shopping Centre and looking after Port Stephens ever since.
None of this is unusual. It is simply what good general practice looks like when it is done deliberately rather than by accident. Open any of them.
Medicare-eligible consultations are bulk billed for patients with a valid Medicare card on weekdays. Weekend arrangements differ, and reception will tell you before you book.
A small number of things sit outside Medicare entirely — privately purchased vaccines, some consumables, and assessments a third party has asked for, such as an insurance or pre-employment medical. Those attract a fee, and you will always be told the figure before anything goes ahead rather than at the desk afterwards.
A GP who saw your numbers two years ago notices a drift that somebody reading the file for the first time cannot. For anything long-term, booking with the same doctor is worth waiting a few extra days for.
For anything urgent, any of our doctors can see you. Your record is shared across the practice, so nobody is starting from scratch, and the person you see today can read what happened last time.
If you have several things to raise, or one big thing, ask for a long appointment when you book. It is bulk billed exactly the same as a standard one, and it is the difference between leaving satisfied and being asked to come back for the rest.
Mental health, care plans, full skin checks and complicated results all deserve the longer slot. Reception cannot book the right length if nobody tells them, so even a word or two when you ring genuinely helps.
Results are discussed in an appointment rather than read out over the counter, because a number without context is either meaningless or frightening and often both. Anything urgent is phoned through to you straight away rather than held until a booking is free.
Where something is outside what general practice should be handling, you will be told so and referred, along with an honest view of waiting times and likely fees.
A practice is more than its doctors. Turn a card over for what each of them actually does.
Male and female doctors, with backgrounds spanning emergency medicine, surgery, paediatrics and general practice across several countries. You choose who you see.
Immunisations, wound care, dressings, ECGs, health assessments and the checks that make a long appointment work. A great deal of what happens here happens with a nurse.
Providers working from our own rooms and others we refer to locally — psychology, podiatry, dietetics, diabetes education and more, coordinated with your GP rather than running separately.
The people who answer the phone, work out how urgently you need to be seen, and hold back a set of appointments each day for the things that cannot wait until next week.
See every doctor Health assessments Allied health Same-day appointments
Patients travel to us from right across Port Stephens, the wider Hunter, and from holidays on the bay. You do not need to live around the corner to be looked after here.
You do not need to live around the corner, and you do not need to have been here before. New patients are welcome, walk-ins are seen subject to doctor availability, and nobody is asked to justify booking an appointment.
Port Stephens fills up over summer. If you are here on holiday, working for the season, or simply passing through and something has gone wrong, book in the same way anyone else would.
Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Farsi, Russian, Spanish, Dari and more are spoken across the practice. Free interpreters can also be arranged through the national service — ask reception when you book.
We acknowledge the Worimi people, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we operate, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
Where our patients come from
Not on the list? It makes no difference — book in the same way anyone else would.
Most people choose a practice on these six things rather than on anything written about philosophy. Here they are.
Checking hours
Monday to Friday 8:00am – 5:30pm, Saturday and Sunday 8:30am – 2:30pm.
Phone lines open at 8:30am on weekdays and 9:00am on weekends. Ring when they open if you need to be seen that day — that is when the day's held-back appointments are released.
See today's timesShop 5, 2 Town Centre Circuit, Salamander Bay NSW 2317.
We are inside Salamander Bay Shopping Centre, so you can park once and do everything. Step-free access throughout, and the pharmacy is a short walk from our door.
Open in Google MapsThe shopping centre car park, at no cost.
No meters, no time-limited street parking, and no circling. It sounds like a small thing and it is one of the most common reasons people tell us they changed practices.
Getting hereWeekdays, for Medicare-eligible consultations.
Weekend arrangements differ — please check with reception. Bring your Medicare card and any concession or DVA card to your first visit so we can get it right from the start.
What is bulk billedNo referral needed to see a GP.
Book online through HotDoc or ring (02) 4008 4400. Bring your medications in their boxes and any recent specialist letters, and ask for a long appointment if there is a lot of history to go through.
Book your first visitPhone appointments for results, scripts and follow-ups.
Medicare has eligibility rules about existing patients, and telehealth does not suit anything that needs examining. Ask reception whether your situation qualifies.
How telehealth worksGP consultations are bulk billed on weekdays for all patients with a valid Medicare card. Weekend arrangements differ, so please check with reception. Some procedures, dressings, privately purchased vaccines, travel medicine and medical reports may attract a small private fee — reception will quote you at the time of booking.
Knowing what a place looks like takes some of the edge off a first visit — particularly for children, and for anyone who has been putting an appointment off.
