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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Our practice receives a high volume of email enquiries. These FAQs deal with some of the most commonly asked questions.

Can you provide me with a quote or estimate for surgery?

We don’t provide quotations or estimates for surgery outside of a consultation. It is necessary for your surgeon to assess you to provide you with an accurate quotation and also to assess if the procedure you are enquiring about is the appropriate one for you. Medicolegal defence organisations advise surgeons not to provide patients with surgical quotations or cost estimates until after a consultation, so it is not possible to provide you with a quotation via email or phone. More information about our fees can be found here.

The 2025 AMA Private Health Insurance Report Card provides an excellent insight into the significant differences between private health insurance rebates from different insurers. When you attend for a consultation we will advise you whether you may be eligible for Medicare and private health insurance rebates, and will provide you with an indication of the possible rebate(s) you may receive. It is imperative that you contact your private health insurer to confirm your coverage and the applicable rebate(s), as for privacy reasons your private health insurer does not make this information available to us and we do not know the details of your policy and coverage. 

If Dr Tomlinson recommends surgery to you our administrative staff will provide you with a detailed surgery fee estimate after your consultation, including the relevant item code(s). If you are self funding surgery then we will also request hospital, prosthesis and anaesthetic fee estimates (where applicable). 

We are unable to provide you with a fee estimate for hospital surgical procedures until after your consultation with Dr Tomlinson. We advise all patients to confirm their insurance eligibility and rebates with their insurer. Different insurers pay different rebates for the same operation, but our surgical fee does not depend on which insurer (if any) you have.

Dr Tomlinson cannot provide consultations via email but she would be delighted to see you in her rooms so that she can discuss your medical history with you, examine you and advise you what options are possible and what she recommends.

Yes.

This is a Medicare rule, not a decision our practice has made. It applies to every specialist in Australia, not just to Melbourne Hand Surgery.

Under Medicare rules, a referral covers a single course of treatment, also called an episode of care. This starts with your initial attendance with your hand surgeon and continues through follow-up (“subsequent attendance”) visits for that same episode, until your surgeon has finished managing it and returns you to your GP’s care.

Once that episode of care is complete, Medicare treats your ongoing care as having returned to your GP.
If a new or recurrent issue comes up, even one related to your original condition, it is a new episode of care for Medicare purposes.
A new referral from your GP is required, and your visit must be billed as a new/returning patient appointment rather than a review.

Services Australia sets this out directly:
“A referral covers a single course of treatment for the referred condition. A single course of treatment is an initial attendance at the specialist or consultant physician. It includes subsequent attendances for the continuing management until the patient is referred back to the referring practitioner… If the patient has a new or unrelated condition, the specialist can start a new course of treatment if there is a new referral in place.”

Source: Referrals for specialist treatment, Services Australia (page last updated 15 August 2025).

We understand this can feel like an inconvenience, especially if you’ve seen Dr Tomlinson before. We are not able to bill your visit as a review once your episode of care has ended. Booking it correctly as a new/returning appointment, with a current referral from your GP, is what Medicare requires to bill your visit correctly. It isn’t our practice creating a hurdle, and it isn’t that we don’t understand the inconvenience. It’s a Medicare rule we have to follow.

If you’re not sure whether your situation needs a new referral, please contact our office and we can help clarify.

We welcome enquiries from regional Victoria, interstate and overseas. Wherever our patients come from we try to streamline patient care so that you do not have to make unnecessary visits or trips. It is generally not possible to be certain that you are suitable for the procedure or operation you are seeking until after you have a consultation. Many consultations are not suitable to be held via videoconsultation, and it is possible that during a face to face consultation your surgeon may determine that you require additional investigations before surgery could be recommended or that surgery is not appropriate during your scheduled visit to Melbourne.

We cannot provide medical advice via email to prospective patients, so we are not able to engage in email correspondence regarding what scans or tests should be performed prior to a consultation. If your referring medical practitioner wishes to contact Dr Tomlinson prior to your appointment to discuss what scans or investigations should be performed she can discuss this with them.

If you wish to seek a consultation and treatment please:

  • forward a referral from your treating medical practitioner to our rooms; please ask your doctor to specify if he/she is able to participate in a telehealth consultation about your care.
  • include the contact details of your nearest or preferred hand therapist in the information that you send to us, as in most instances patients who have hand surgery require care from a hand therapist after the procedure if they are to have an optimal outcome. Please contact the hand therapist to ascertain what your treatment costs are and the waiting time to obtain an appointment.
  • bring recent x-rays of your affected finger, hand or wrist, along with the images (hard copy or on disk) of any scans that you have had performed, and any other relevant investigations such as nerve studies, blood tests or cardiac investigations.

It is important that we are able to contact a doctor and hand therapist who are prepared to be involved in your post-operative care so that we can check that you will have access to appropriate care after your surgery. We want our patients to have optimal outcomes from surgery and hand therapy, and post procedure medical reviews are required.

There are increased risks associated with “fly-in, fly-out” surgery because if you do not receive the correct post operative care your outcome will be compromised. If you experience a complication once you have returned interstate or overseas it may be difficult to access specialist assessment and treatment. We will do everything that we can to minimise these potential problems through clear communication with your doctor and hand therapist, but unfortunately physical distance can and does create problems.

If you are visiting from overseas please be aware that you will be required to pay upfront for your treatment. We will provide you with receipts for your payments that you can forward to your health insurance company to claim reimbursement.