You found the clinic through an ad or a search result, the website looks professional, and the booking page wants a card number. A good-looking site is cheap to build, so on its own it tells you nothing about who runs the clinic or who will be on the call.
You can check a telehealth clinic against four public sources in about ten minutes, without creating an account or speaking to anyone. Two are government registers. The other two are documents the clinic should already have published.
Key points:
- Search the practitioner on the AHPRA register. It is free, covers 16 health professions, and shows registration type and any conditions.
- Look up the clinic’s ABN. ABN Lookup shows the legal entity behind the trading name, whether the ABN is active and where the business is based.
- Read the privacy policy. The national privacy regulator lists eight things it must tell you, including where your information is stored.
- Ask how prescribing works. The Medical Board of Australia does not support prescribing from a questionnaire alone, with no real-time consultation.
How do you check that a practitioner is registered?
Every registered health practitioner in Australia appears on one national list, the Register of practitioners kept by AHPRA (the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency). It covers 16 professions, from medicine, nursing and pharmacy through to psychology and paramedicine, and anyone can search it for free.
Type in the practitioner’s name and the entry shows their profession, their registration type and any conditions or undertakings that limit what they can do. AHPRA puts the meaning of a missing entry bluntly: if a person is not on the register, “you know that they are not allowed to provide any services as a health practitioner”. The same page links to a separate list of practitioners whose registration has been cancelled.
A common name will return several people, so check the profession and the suburb before you draw a conclusion, and try a middle name if the clinic publishes one. The entry sets out what each condition or undertaking is, so read the wording before you judge it.
None of this works if the clinic will not tell you who its practitioners are. A clinic that describes “our medical team” and names nobody has left you with nothing to search.
How do you find out who owns the clinic?
Scroll to the bottom of the clinic’s website and look for an ABN, the 11-digit Australian Business Number. Paste it into ABN Lookup, which the Australian Business Register describes as free access to public ABN information and lists “to check a business before buying” among its uses.
The record gives the legal entity name, whether the ABN is active and since when, the entity type, whether the business is registered for GST, and the state and postcode of its main location. LeafLine Clinic’s footer carries ABN 80 693 260 954. The record for that number, read on 7 October 2026, shows LeafLine Clinic Pty Ltd, an Australian private company, active and registered for GST since 28 November 2025, with a main business location in Victoria.
Read the record against the website. The entity name will often differ from the brand, which is normal for a company that trades under another name, but the privacy policy and the terms should name the same entity that the ABN belongs to. A cancelled ABN, a number that belongs to an unrelated business, or no ABN anywhere on the site are all reasons to stop and ask before you pay.
What should the privacy policy tell you?
A telehealth clinic holds your health history, your Medicare details and your card number, so its privacy policy is worth five minutes. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner sets out what a privacy policy must cover, and the list doubles as a checklist:
- the organisation’s name and contact details
- what kinds of personal information it collects and stores
- how it collects the information and where it is stored
- why it needs the information
- how it will use and disclose it
- how you can see your information or ask for a correction
- how to lodge a complaint
- whether your information is likely to go outside Australia
People tend to skip the last item. Most clinics run on booking, email and video software built overseas, and a careful policy names where each piece of data goes. Our post on privacy in a telehealth consultation covers what happens to the consultation itself.
Does a real consultation happen before any prescription?
Ask this one directly, by phone or email, before you book. The Medical Board of Australia’s telehealth guidelines, in effect since 1 September 2023, apply to doctors and say that prescribing “without a real-time direct consultation, whether in-person, via video or telephone, is not good practice and is not supported by the Board”. The Board names the pattern it has in mind: requests made by text, email or online form, based on a health questionnaire, where the practitioner has never spoken with the patient.
The same guidelines describe what a proper telehealth appointment looks like from your side of the screen. The practitioner tells you who they are and what their role is, and confirms your identity as well as they can. If a clinic’s process ends in a prescription and at no point puts a registered practitioner on a call with you, the Board’s guidance describes that process as poor practice.
A clinic’s own marketing is a related signal. Australian advertising law stops clinics from promoting prescription medicines to the public, so a website that names one, or promises a result from one, is a reason for caution. Specifics about treatment belong inside a private consultation.
Where do you complain if something goes wrong?
Two different bodies handle complaints, and which one you need depends on the problem. AHPRA and the National Boards deal with whether a registered practitioner is practising safely. They cannot award compensation or settle a dispute over money.
Fees, refunds and service problems go to the health complaints organisation in your state or territory. AHPRA’s list of health complaints organisations names all eight, including the Health Care Complaints Commission in New South Wales, the Health Complaints Commissioner in Victoria and the Office of the Health Ombudsman in Queensland. A well-run clinic also publishes its own complaints process, usually in its terms or its privacy policy, and says how long a response takes.
The bottom line
Run the four checks before you enter a card number, and treat a gap in any of them as a question to put to the clinic. Most gaps have an ordinary explanation, and a clinic with nothing to hide will give it to you in one email. If you would like a second list to work through, our questions to ask before you book cover fees, cancellations and what happens between appointments.
LeafLine Clinic’s practitioners, ABN and policies are on the about us page and in the site footer. For anything to do with your own health, speak to a registered health practitioner.
This article is general information only and is not medical advice. If your symptoms are severe, sudden, or worsening, contact your local doctor, an urgent care service, or call 000.
