The Department of Health has streamlined the ordering of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Under the Australian Government’s ‘Living with COVID’ primary care package, PPE deliveries from the National Medical Stockpile will now be sent directly to your place of practice. They will be delivered by logistics company DHL Australia, rather than through Healthy North Coast.
At the same time, Healthy North Coast has revised the request form for PPE, Living with COVID PPE bundles, emergency provision PPE and pulse oximeters. This will enable us to capture the relevant details needed to submit your order to the Department of Health. The link to the form remains the same.
The purpose of these changes is to deliver a more streamlined approach to PPE distribution and to provide greater visibility of stock tracking and delivery. Importantly it will remove the requirement for primary health networks to be intermediary distributors to practices.
This will result in time and effort savings and reduce distribution time lags, enabling Healthy North Coast to focus on checking allocations and verifying PPE orders received. Orders should be submitted to Healthy North Coast weekly by midday Wednesday.
Shipping will be by road freight and transit times will vary depending on location. Practices that are rural and/or remote, as per the Modified Monash Model 3-7, will be flagged as priority sites for shipping.
Once your PPE order is generated by the national distributor, a purchase order confirmation will be emailed to your practice. You can use your order number to track your order on the DHL website.
If you have placed an order in the past 4 weeks, your order will be delivered to Healthy North Coast as per the previous process. Noting that each PPE bundle equates to one month’s supply, you do not need to submit a new order for PPE under the new process until you have received your existing order and used your allocation.
PPE bundles are available to:
- GPs, ACCHSs and GPRCs willing to manage COVID-positive patients face-to-face until 30 September 2022 (see ordering guide for more information)
- ACCHS and rural and remote GPs willing to manage COVID-positive patients virtually and respiratory patients face-to-face, where workforce capacity is limited and the GP is serving the community for most or all health needs, until 30 September 2022
- all GPs and GPRCs willing to manage COVID-positive people virtually, and respiratory patients face-to-face, until 30 September 2022
- community pharmacists who are administering COVID-19 vaccinations and booster doses, until 30 September 2022.
The Department of Health continues to monitor and review the program. We’ll let you know about any additional changes. Thank you once again for the support and services you provide to our community.
Practices can contact the dedicated DHL number on 1300 279 498 or email at [email protected] for queries.
If you have any questions, please contact your primary health coordinator or Kash Reddy at [email protected].