CUSTOMER STORY
The Express Lane for Patient Routine Requests
How Walker Street Doctors North Sydney Delivers Same-Day Routine Requests
With HotDoc Routine Requests, one North Sydney practice has transformed how patients access repeat scripts, referrals and more — freeing up appointments for patients who truly need them, while keeping continuity of care front and centre.
Walker Street Doctors is a 12-doctor general practice based in North Sydney. We spoke with GP and Practice Owner Nerida McDonald, who is a long-time advocate for patient-centred care. With a large patient base made up of busy working professionals — mobile, time-poor, and accustomed to getting things done efficiently, Dr. McDonald has always looked for ways to support access to care without compromising quality or continuity.
Walker Street Doctors uses all Routine Request types, handling repeat prescriptions, specialist referrals, medical certificates, pathology, and radiology requests through HotDoc.
The challenge
Before the widespread availability of digital repeat request tools, patients who needed a routine script or referral had few options: book an appointment, call the practice, or go elsewhere. For a busy practice, this created friction on both sides. Valuable appointment slots were being consumed by straightforward requests that didn’t require face-to-face consultations — making it harder for patients with complex or acute needs to get timely access to care.
Dr. McDonald was an early adopter of digital routine request tools, having first used OzDocs Online back in 2011. She began using HotDoc’s earlier product Repeats in 2019, before it became the full product suite of Routine Requests in 2023. For her, it was, in her own words, “a complete no-brainer.”
“It’s not that revolutionary. I see it as an imperative and part of our workflow. And I find it really curious that people would resist that.”
While the practice is private-billing with clear payment policies, staff were having to handle conversations with patients about being unable to book their next appointment until they settled their accounts. And while they’re trained to do so in a professional and friendly-manner, the practice was open to a solution to avoid these uncomfortable conversations.
HotDoc Payments, including Pre-authorisation, offered the consistency and protection the practice needed to secure payment prior to the appointment and eliminate the administrative burden on staff.
How Walker Street Doctors use Routine Requests
HotDoc’s Routine Requests product is woven into the daily operations at Walker Street Doctors. Requests come through the HotDoc Sidebar and are actioned by doctors in between patients. Reception is responsible for reallocating requests to available GPs when the assigned doctor is not in for the day.
Dr. McDonald personally receives an average of 17 requests per week with a 90.7% approval rate of Requests types that she receives. Scripts and referrals making up the majority of volume, followed by other request types.
A 7 day commitment
What sets Walker Street Doctors apart is its commitment to availability. Dr. McDonald personally clears her Routine Requests inbox every single day — including Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays, with the practice promoting this across social media.
Walker Street Doctors has also established a clear, reliable service-level promise for patients: submit your request by midday, and it will be completed by close of business.
“If you have your request in by midday on that day, it will be done by close of business. You can absolutely take that to the bank.”
Dr. McDonald draws an analogy to the Uber experience: knowing exactly when something will arrive removes uncertainty and anxiety from the process.
“If you know exactly how long you’ll be waiting for a script or a referral, that is psychologically much better than sticking a request in and going ‘oh well, I’m not quite sure when that’s going to be done'.’”
Clear terms, fewer inappropriate requests
Early on, Dr. McDonald found that long, complex terms and conditions were working against the practice. Patients weren’t reading them, which led to inappropriate requests and made it harder for doctors to process things on the same day.
She described the solution as radical simplicity: she scrapped the lengthy conditions and replaced them with just two or three punchy lines describing Routine Requests as:
“This is the express lane, not the whole highway.”
The result? Inappropriate requests dropped to fewer than a handful per week, making it far easier for doctors to complete requests on the same day.
Active promotion is key to success
Walker Street’s patients don’t stumble upon Routine Requests, they are actively guided to it. The entire practice team promote it consistently across:
- Monthly patient email newsletters, especially ahead of holiday periods
- Professional and practice social media platforms
- The waiting room slideshow
- Google Maps updates
- In-consultation, with GPs demonstrating the feature to patients directly
- At reception, where staff guide patients to submit via HotDoc rather than phoning
The benefits and outcomes
The benefits of Routine Requests are felt across the entire practice by patients, GPs, and reception staff alike.
Appointments reserved for those who need them
- Clinical hours freed up for complex appointment types and unwell patients
- Busy patients get what they need without taking a slot from someone who needs it more
Continuity of care maintained
- Patients stay connected to their own GP rather than going to external script services
- Infrequent in-person patients are nudged to book a check-up alongside their Routine Request
Operational clarity and reliability
- Midday-to-close-of-business SLA understood by both patients and doctors
- Email notifications alert Dr. McDonald to new requests, even outside clinic hours
- Request reallocation system keeps the inbox moving regardless of who is in
“It enables us to utilise our appointments much better… It's a really efficient way for people to access GPs when that's what they need."
Competitive with more fragmented options
Dr. McDonald sees Routine Requests as far more than a convenience tool — it is a strategic response to the growing threat of fragmented care. With other platforms expanding rapidly, she argues that GPs who don’t offer a comparable level of access risk losing the routine work that keeps patients engaged with their practice — leaving only the most complex, time-intensive cases behind.
“Those [other] companies are taking all of the low-hanging fruit and leaving GPs with the wading-through-treacle work. If you can’t see that, you’ve got your head in the sand.”
By contrast, when patients can get their routine needs handled conveniently through their own GP, they stay connected to their practice and care stays continuous.
“Otherwise, care becomes fragmented, and then we’re in all sorts of trouble.”
Advice for other practices
For practices and GPs considering Routine Requests, this case study revealed some recommendations that other practices can easily implement to be more successful with the product.
- Keep your terms and conditions short and catchy. If patients won’t read them, they can’t follow them.
- Establish a clear turnaround commitment that both doctors and patients understand and trust.
- Promote Routine Requests actively across every channel. Patients won’t use what they don’t know about.
- Build a reallocation system for when GPs are absent so no request falls through the cracks
- Treat it as a core part of your workflow, not an optional add-on
When asked what would break if Routine Requests were no longer available, Dr. McDonald’s answer was:
“Unhappy patients. Underused appointments. And I would lose my reputation as a forward-thinking practice that is aiming to create not only patient utopia — but also GP utopia.”
What you’re seeing here isn’t just about the product. It’s really about how GPs chose to use it. Nerida didn’t just switch on Routine Requests. She built a seven-day availability promise, rewrote the T&Cs, and made it part of the entire patient journey, from Google Maps to the waiting room.
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