Clinics stop suiting people for ordinary reasons. The practitioner who knew your history moves on. Appointments that used to be available next week are suddenly available next month. The phone number that once reached a person now reaches a queue. None of this means anyone did anything wrong, but it does mean you are allowed to move, and the mechanics of moving are more straightforward than most people expect.
Your records belong to you
Australian privacy law gives you the right to a copy of your own health records. A clinic can charge a reasonable fee for preparing them and is expected to respond to a request within a reasonable time, usually taken to be around 30 days. It cannot refuse simply because you are leaving.
The most useful document to ask for is a treatment summary: a condensed account of your history with the clinic, what has been tried, and where things stand. A one-line email to your current clinic does the job:
“Please send me a copy of my records and a treatment summary. I am happy to complete any consent form you need.”
Keep the reply. Even if the clinic is slow to respond, your request is on the record, and the new clinic can follow it up from their end once you have given them consent to do so.
What to gather before you book
You do not need a complete file to get started, and waiting for one clinic before contacting another usually just adds weeks. What helps, roughly in order:
- A treatment summary, if you have one or can get one.
- Recent letters or reports, including anything sent to your regular GP.
- Your own notes. What has changed since your last review, what you have been doing day to day, and what you want from the next stage of your care. Nobody knows this part better than you.
If some of it is missing, book anyway and say so. A clinic that handles transfers properly will not expect you to arrive with a perfect folder.
What the new clinic should do at their end
A transfer is a two-sided job, and you can tell a lot about a clinic by how it treats its half. Reasonable things to expect:
- A consent form early. Requesting records from your previous clinic requires your written consent. A clinic that asks for it up front is planning to do the work.
- Their team does the chasing. Once you have consented, the clinic’s own support staff should request and follow up your records, rather than leaving that to you.
- A full first assessment. The clinician should read your history and still make their own independent assessment, rather than nodding through whatever came before. This can feel like repetition when you have told the story before. It is also the thing that protects you: a clinician who forms their own view is a clinician actually looking at your case.
- Published fees. You should be able to see the price of every appointment, and the cancellation policy, before you pay anything. The fee schedule should not require a phone call to discover.
What continuity looks like once you have moved
The point of moving is not the move itself. It is what the next year of care feels like. Three things distinguish a clinic that takes continuity seriously:
- The same clinician at each visit. Follow-up appointments belong with the person who took your history, made the assessment, and remembers what you said last time.
- Reviews that are scheduled, not left to you. Ongoing care runs on a cadence set by the clinician, and regular reviews are booked rather than hoped for.
- Your GP kept in the loop, if you want that. With your consent, a letter to your regular GP after a consultation keeps everyone involved in your care working from the same information.
How LeafLine Clinic handles transfers
LeafLine Clinic runs a defined transfer process: you share what you have, our patient-support team requests the rest from your previous clinic with your written consent, and your first appointment is a full consultation with an AHPRA-registered Clinician who reviews your history with you and makes an independent clinical assessment. Follow-up appointments are booked with the same Clinician. The steps are set out on our changing clinics page, and every fee is on the fees page before you book.
If you would rather talk it through first, the free 10-minute info call exists for exactly this kind of question.
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.
