Contact the healthcare worker who referred your child to the hospital. This may have been your child's GP, specialist or allied health worker. Explain that a new referral is needed in order for you and your child to attend the upcoming virtual appointment.

When requesting a new referral, make sure you ask for it to be addressed to the clinician you're booked to see for the virtual appointment. The clinician’s name is included in:

• the appointment letter which may have been given to you when you booked
• or, the SMS you recieved after booking the virtual appointment.

Your child's GP or specialist can submit your child's new referral to the hospital on your behalf through our online referral platform, Consultmed.

If they choose not to submit the new referral to the hosital for you, they will provide it as a letter, an email or an email attachment. If this is the case, you will be able to securely submit it to the hospital yourself.

We use a secure online service, called Consultmed, to manage patient referrals. There is a dedicated portal for parents and carers to securely submit their child's referral.

Once you've opened the referral portal, select the hospital and service in which your child's virtual appointment has been booked.

If the service isn't listed, please choose 'General Outpatients' and our staff will make sure it's sent to the correct team.

Within the portal, you will be asked to provide some information about your child, including details from their Medicare card and any private health or concession cards under their name.

You will also be asked to copy any clinical details from your child's referral onto the page.

At the bottom of the page you can:

• upload your child's referral if it was sent to you as an email or attachment,
• or use your phone to take a photo of the referral if it was given to you as a letter.

Prior to selecting 'Submit', you can choose to receive any updates about the status of the referral via SMS or email. Choosing to receive these updates is optional.