PLEASE NOTE CHANGES TO PRESCRIPTION REFILL SERVICES WHICH WILL TAKE EFFECT FROM 1ST SEPTEMBER 2026

Our office receives a high number of inquiries by phone and email. Please read the following before contacting our team to ensure your inquiry is appropriately directed.

All inquiries, either by phone or email, will be triaged and forwarded to the appropriate team member to be actioned according to our clinical pathways.

We will aim to action non-urgent and administrative inquiries within 5-10 business days.

Clinic Appointments

All inquiries relating to clinic appointments should be directed to the Specialist Outpatient Clinics: 03 9345 6180 or use the online form.

You can also do this via the My RCH Portal or you can sign up in person when you are next at the hospital, please bring a form of ID.

Clinic Rescheduling and Cancellations

We request that you do not cancel appointments less than 2 weeks prior to your planned appointment.

Late cancellations are difficult to refill and represent lost opportunity to treat other children waiting on our wait list.

We understand that sometimes plans change with short notice. If late cancellations are truly unavoidable, our preference is to consult by telehealth wherever possible so that the care of your child’s care be progressed at least in part (see Telehealth below).

Repeated late cancellations will be moved to the end of the wait list or removed from the waitlist at the doctor’s discretion.

Prescription Refills

The Department of Nephrology provides a consultation service, designed to assist you to work with your GP and/or paediatrician to manage your child’s kidney health. It is our expectation that between specialist appointments, your GP or referring paediatrician will maintain prescriptions of any medications initiated by the RCH Nephrology team.

Commencing on the 1st of September 2026, prescriptions will only be provided during scheduled outpatient clinic appointments, with the following exceptions:

• Children on dialysis
• Children who have received a kidney transplant
• Medications only available via RCH Pharmacy (see below)

All other patients will be directed to source repeat prescriptions from their GP or phone/online prescription service. 

Prescriptions for all patients will no longer be faxed to local pharmacies and will only be mailed to the registered home address. Please monitor your medication supplies closely.

The Royal Children’s Hospital is not able to send a prescription to your mobile phone.

Medications only available via RCH Pharmacy

• Calcitriol Liquid (requires SAS approval) 
• Hypersal (please consider transition to salt tabs which are readily available in local pharmacies (same concentration) 
• Ural (patients who have a concession card)
• Atovaquone
• Azathioprine
• Amlodipine liquid 
• Losartan Liquid 
• Tacrolimus (Sandoz brand) tablets or liquid
• Mycophenolate
• Prednisolone (for transplant patients)

Telehealth

It is our preference to see your child in person for a face-to-face medical assessment. We may not be able to perform a full medical assessment of your child without examining them, especially if it is their first appointment.

If your child has been scheduled for a face-to-face appointment, this is because your doctor has deemed it necessary to see them face-to-face.

We are not able to respond to inquiries requesting a switch from Face to Face to Telehealth. If you choose to switch your appointment to Telehealth, you agree to the following:

• Your child MUST ATTEND the appointment with you, without exception.
• You accept that the assessment of your child will be limited by not being able to physically examine them.
• PRIOR TO THE APPOINTMENT you will review previous letters and ensure interim pathology and imaging are performed, if necessary (see below section "Requests for Blood Tests or Ultrasound").
• PRIOR TO THE APPOINTMENT you will source a height, weight and blood pressure measurement from your GP or other community clinician.

Requests for Blood Tests or Ultrasound

If you are unsure whether pathology or medical imaging needs to be performed prior to your next appointment, please reference the last outpatient letter sent to you and your referring physician. We recommend signing up to the Patient Portal to view previous letters.

If you have misplaced the request provided in your last clinic please make an appointment with your GP to replace the requests.

Do I need a new referral every year?

The Department of Nephrology provides a consultation service, designed to assist you to work with your GP and/or paediatrician to manage your child’s kidney health.

Maintaining regular contact with your GP increases their familiarity with your child’s condition and our advice, provides an opportunity for broader health prevention and maintenance of prescriptions. Please ask your GP for a referral each year to continue being seen by the nephrology team.

Kindness

We commit to treating you and your child with care and respect. We ask that you treat our staff with the same respect.

We are a busy unit with a high workload. Contacting us multiple times on the same day will not expedite a clinical response to your inquiry.

We will not tolerate any aggressive contact with our team members.

If your inquiry is sufficiently urgent that you feel it requires a response faster than we are able provide it, please present your child to their local GP, urgent care centre, nurse on call or emergency department – based on your level of concern.

Contact Details

Nephrology Department
The Royal Children's Hospital
50 Flemington Road
Parkville 3152
Victoria, Australia 

Location

Nephrology administration
3rd Floor, West Building
Zone K
(Yellow lifts)

Telephone: (03) 9345 5054
Facsimile: (03) 9345 5611
Email: kidney@rch.org.au

Specialist Clinics appointments

Specialist Clinics making and cancelling appointments.

Referrals