IT support for GP clinics in Townsville that keeps the waiting room moving
Tech TroubleShooters looks after IT for general practices and independent medical clinics in Townsville and North Queensland: the reception and consulting room computers, phones, internet, email and backups. We keep patient information private, help you cover the IT side of RACGP accreditation and My Health Record, and when something stops at 8.30 on a Monday morning, you’re talking to Kelly or Carisa, not a queue.
The mornings that go wrong
- “Reception can’t log in and there are six people at the front desk.”
- “The doctor in room 3 says the computer’s crawling again.”
- “The surveyor wants to see our backup log. Do we even have one?”
- “We were meant to update our My Health Record policy by 1 October.”
- “Someone clicked a link in an email that looked like it came from pathology.”
A clinic runs to a tight timetable. One frozen computer at reception and the whole day runs late. Most of what we do for practices is making sure those mornings don’t happen, and getting things moving quickly when they do.
The rules that touch your IT, in plain words
This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice. Your accrediting agency has the final say on what it wants to see.
The Privacy Act applies to every clinic, whatever its size. Health service providers don’t get the small business exemption. Health information is “sensitive information”, so you need reasonable steps to protect it. If you suspect a data breach, you must assess it within 30 days at the most. If serious harm is likely, you must tell the patients affected and the OAIC as soon as practicable.
The RACGP Standards ask for specific IT evidence. Accreditation still runs on the 5th edition. Its information security indicator asks for things like a backup log, current antivirus and firewalls, backups kept offsite, and a tested plan for getting your information back. The 6th edition was published in August 2026. Its criterion F8 expands this into a regularly tested plan for keeping IT running and recovering it, including a plan for cyber incidents. Accreditation arrangements for the 6th edition haven’t been announced yet, but practices are being encouraged to start now.
My Health Record has its own written policy. If your practice is registered, the My Health Records Rules 2026 require a written security and access policy. It must cover how user accounts are set up and switched off, training before anyone gets access and every year after, how breaches are handled, and security measures like encryption, backups and system maintenance. It must be reviewed at least once a year. Practices registered before 1 April 2026 had until 1 October 2026 to bring their policy up to date.
ASD Essentials is the new baseline. ASD launched it on 15 October 2026 as the successor to the Essential Eight. If your insurer’s questionnaire still uses Essential Eight wording, that’s fine. It remains valid during the changeover.
What we do about it
Every computer watched and updated in the background, at reception and in every consulting room, including drive health checks. A drive that’s starting to fail usually shows warning signs, so we can replace it before it takes a morning’s appointments with it.
Backups that are encrypted and kept in Australia, so a dead server or a ransomware attack doesn’t take your records with it. See backup and disaster recovery.
A login of their own for every doctor, nurse and receptionist, with two-step sign-in, and accounts closed when a locum or staff member finishes. That’s exactly what the My Health Record policy has to describe, so the policy and the reality match.
Ransomware protection that watches behaviour, not shop antivirus, for managed IT clients. See cyber security.
Email filtering to catch fake pathology and supplier emails, and DMARC set-up that makes it much harder for scammers to send emails pretending to be your clinic. See email security.
Phones that keep ringing. Our phone systems are hosted on secure Australian servers, so if the clinic loses power or internet, calls can go to mobiles instead of going unanswered. See cloud phone systems.
A plain-English report every month showing what we updated, checked and blocked. When we’re doing our job, nothing much seems to happen. The report shows you the work behind that.
The honest bit
We’re not your clinical software company, and we won’t pretend to know every screen in it. Our job is everything around it: the computers it runs on, the internet it needs, the backups, the logins and the security. When it’s an IT problem that needs your software supplier, we’ll deal with them for you. We also won’t write your practice policies, but we’ll give you the IT facts to put in them.
Who you’ll deal with
Kelly Hunn has been fixing IT for more than 30 years, and Kelly and Carisa have run their own business since 2006. When you call, it’s Kelly or Carisa, every time, and they already know your clinic. Usually one of us answers straight away. If we’re driving or on a job, we’ll call or text you back, usually within the hour.
Managed IT clients get 24/7 support at no extra charge, which helps if you run evening or weekend sessions. Not a client yet? Call any time. After hours we’ll get back to you as soon as we can, but we can’t promise to start straight away.
We support clinics across Townsville, Magnetic Island, Ayr, Ingham and Charters Towers, often remotely. No lock-in contracts unless you ask for a set term.
Questions practice managers ask us
Does My Health Record change our IT obligations?
If your practice is registered, yes. You need a written security and access policy that covers user accounts, training, breach handling and security measures such as encryption and backups, and you must review it at least once a year. We can make sure the IT you actually have matches what the policy says.
What does the RACGP want to see about backups?
Under the current 5th edition, accreditation looks for a backup log, backups kept offsite, and a tested plan for recovering your information. The 6th edition expands this into a regularly tested plan for keeping IT running and recovering it, including a plan for cyber incidents. Your encrypted backups with us are kept in Australia.
Is cloud-based clinical software safe?
It can be, and for many clinics it’s simpler than a server in the back room. What matters is individual logins, two-step sign-in, knowing where the provider keeps your data, and a plan for when the internet drops. We’ll go through those with you before you switch.
What happens if a staff email account is hacked?
Call us straight away. We’ll lock the account, change the passwords, check what was sent and whether any patient information was exposed, and help you work out whether it needs to be reported. Two-step sign-in and email filtering make it much less likely in the first place.
Do you look after small clinics with only one or two doctors?
Yes. Small clinics have the same privacy obligations as big ones, without an IT person on staff. We can look after everything on a fixed monthly basis, or help by the hour if that suits you better.
Tell us what’s bugging you.
Talk it through with Kelly or Carisa. They’ll ask about your computers, backups, logins and email security, and tell you plainly what’s in good shape and what needs work.
Leave your number and Kelly or Carisa will call you back, usually within the hour, and within one business day at the latest.
Busy? We'll ring you.
Leave your number and tell us what's not working. We'll take it from there.