What does the RACGP Standard expect practices to tell patients?
Criterion GP1.3 of the RACGP Standards for general practices covers care outside normal opening hours. Its indicators are that patients are informed about how they can access after-hours care, and that patients can access after-hours care. The Standard's guidance suggests an out-of-hours message on the practice's after-hours phone number, the practice's information sources such as the website, email signatures, social media and posters, and a clearly visible sign outside the practice showing opening hours and after-hours arrangements. It also expects team members to be able to explain the arrangements, and notes of after-hours care provided by or on behalf of the practice to be added to the patient record.
Which public services can callers be directed to?
Each service suits a different caller. Triple zero (000) is for emergencies. The healthdirect helpline is answered by registered nurses 24 hours a day, and its after-hours GP service may offer a call back or a video call from a GP. Victoria's NURSE-ON-CALL is a free 24-hour line answered by registered nurses, and Queensland's 13 HEALTH offers registered nurse advice 24 hours a day for the cost of a local call. Medicare Urgent Care Clinics take walk-in patients, bulk bill and treat urgent problems that are not life-threatening. The Department of Health tells people with life-threatening problems to call triple zero (000) or go to the nearest emergency department instead.
In what order should the message list the options?
Put the emergency instruction first, in the opening sentence, ahead of the practice name and hours if possible. Next, give your practice's own after-hours arrangement, such as an on-call clinician or a deputising service, if you have one. Then give the nurse line for your state and the nearest Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, and finish with when the practice reopens and how to book. Keep the message short enough that callers hear the emergency direction and the next option before they decide to hang up. Use the same order on your website, door sign and email signature so patients see one set of instructions.
How do you keep the contact details accurate?
Service names, numbers and coverage change, and a message recorded once can go out of date without anyone noticing. Take every detail from the service's own official page instead of another practice's message or an old poster, and record the date you checked it. Medicare Urgent Care Clinic hours vary, and the Department of Health tells patients to check their local clinic's opening hours, so only name a specific clinic if someone checks its hours. Give one person the job of rechecking all details on a fixed schedule and updating the phone message, website, signage and email signatures together. Call your own after-hours line to hear what patients hear.
What should an after-hours answering service or AI say?
If calls go to an answering service or AI receptionist after hours, give it the same options, in the same order, as your recorded message. It should not assess symptoms beyond the clinician-approved protocol you supply. Calls that meet your urgent criteria follow the escalation route in that protocol, and everything else becomes a booking or a message for the morning. Under GP1.3, notes of after-hours care provided by or on behalf of the practice must be added to the patient record, so decide how the service's call records reach your practice software. Test the setup with scripted calls before it goes live.
What about clinics that are not general practices?
Dental, allied health and specialist practices are not assessed against the RACGP Standards for general practices, but their patients still call after hours. The same structure works: emergency direction first, any arrangement the practice offers its own patients, then the public options that fit your patients, and when you reopen. Specialists and day procedure services that give post-procedure instructions should put the contact route their clinicians approve in both the phone message and the discharge information, so the two match. Check whether your own professional standards or accreditation scheme sets requirements for after-hours information.