How YourGP is built
We set out to build services and facilities good enough that GPs want to stay their whole careers. This page explains what that means in practice.
A group of GP-led practices in Canberra
YourGP is owned by Dr John Deery and Dr Mel Deery. We run four general practices across Canberra — Crace, Denman Prospect, Lyneham and Garema Place in the city — along with two dedicated services, YourSkin CBR for skin cancer medicine and Canberra Vasectomy.
We have always believed the best patient care happens in GP-led practices. So rather than building a business that manages doctors, we built one that serves them: the systems, teams and spaces that let a GP practise excellent medicine, sustainably, for a very long time.
Everything below follows from that — first what practising here actually looks like for a doctor, then the values, pillars and six questions we hold ourselves to.
What's in it for you
If you are a GP working out whether to practise here, start here: how busy you will be, where you will be working, how we bill, the hours, the colleagues around you, and the say you get in how the place runs. The values and pillars that shape all of it come further down the page, along with an honest account of who does well here.
Will I be busy?
Demand runs ahead of the capacity we have to meet it. We are not asking anyone to build a practice from scratch — we are looking for doctors to absorb patients we already have and cannot see quickly enough.
Established GPs here run at better than 98% utilisation across the year, and the GPs who started most recently filled their books within a week or two.
To put a number on it: Garema Place, our practice in the city, saw about 32,000 appointments across 6,000 patients last financial year out of ten consulting rooms.
The rooms you will work in
A consulting room is where you spend your working life. Ours are generously sized and every one of them has a window to the outside. No windowless boxes.
Private billing done properly
About 90% of our consultations are privately billed. The rest is bulk billing — mostly rapid immunisation clinics, after-care follow-up and the higher-fee Medicare items.
Patients pay on the day. By the time they arrive they have been told at least twice that there is an expectation to pay, so it very rarely becomes an issue.
The number we would point a doctor to is the DNA rate — patients who do not attend. Every no-show is an unpaid hour of your time, so it tells you more about your day than any headline figure does.
Patients who pay tend to be more engaged in their own care. If someone genuinely falls on hard times we will take the Medicare rebate for a while and resume charging when they are back on their feet. We have standards in the other direction too: if patients will not pay, or will not treat the team with dignity, we move them on. It is rare, and we are slow to do it, but it is an option.
If charging patients feels uncomfortable to you, this will not be the right practice. If it feels fair, you will do well here.
What about the service fee and what would I take home?
That is the question worth asking, and it deserves a proper answer rather than a headline number. Our information pack sets out the service fee split in full, what established GPs here are billing, what that means in take-home terms, and how we support a new GP while their book fills. Ask us for it and we will send it through.
Your hours and your leave
You are your own boss. We will tell you what tends to work, and then it is your call.
Your week
The practices are open 8am to 6pm and you set your own hours within that. They are closed on Sundays.
Rooms are taken by the session, a whole morning or a whole afternoon, so that is the unit you book. If you want to fill quickly, Mondays and Fridays matter most. Saturday morning sessions are available too, and most GPs here choose to take one every month or so.
Your pace
You have the option of starting at two to three patients an hour while you settle in and learn our systems.
Most established GPs here sit at three to four an hour across an eight to nine hour day. That is your call, not ours.
Your leave
You set your own leave. Most GPs here take three to five weeks a year.
Six weeks is comfortably accommodated. Beyond that we would need a conversation about room utilisation, and we would rather have it openly than have you feel you cannot ask.
The colleagues around you
You are going to be away sometimes, and what happens to your patients while you are gone determines whether you actually relax.
Every tenant GP practising across our clinics provides a high standard of care to their own patients. That is what makes leave straightforward here. When you are away your patients keep receiving the same standard of care from a colleague who already knows the practice and the local referral network.
Across the group we also have GPs holding masters degrees and advanced diplomas in skin medicine, so when something walks in that needs a procedural pair of hands, it does not have to leave us.
It is not all clinical, either. There is a proper Christmas party every year and a mid-year one to go with it, and a YourGP tennis meet-up that runs through the year. Small things, but they are a fair part of why this feels like a group rather than a set of practices that happen to share a name.
A say in how the place runs
GPs here are tenants receiving a service, not employees being managed. That only means something if you have a say in what the service actually is.
GP meetings every two months
We meet as a group of doctors every two months to work through clinical matters and how the practices are running. It is where clinical standards get discussed properly, and where operational decisions that affect your consulting day get made with doctors in the room rather than announced afterwards.
We ask and we act on it
We survey GP satisfaction formally every four months and hold the result against a target we publish to ourselves. Between surveys we keep asking informally — the point is to hear that something is not working while it is still easy to fix, rather than four months later.
Teaching the next generation
We are the preferred training location for GP registrars in Canberra. We host ANU medical students on placement and registrars through the RACGP pathway, and in 2020 we were recognised with an RACGP state award. If teaching is something you want to do, there are supervision opportunities here and we will support you into them.
If skin cancer or minor surgery interests you, our skin doctors are happy to mentor and upskill you, and we can teach and support you to do joint injections. YourSkin CBR shows what that side of things looks like.
Our values in full
Caring
We get the right things done, the right way.
Excellence
We take pride in whatever we do.
Kaizen
Continuous improvement. We experiment, learn fast, and improve every day.
Our Four Pillars
They are sequential. Each one enables the next, which is why we refuse to fix a problem downstream without looking upstream first.
Team Excellence
Engaged employees are the foundation. Our reception, nursing and admin teams provide the service that everything else rests on.
GP Service Excellence
GPs are tenants receiving service and facilities, not employees being managed. Happy doctors do better medicine.
Patient Experience
Patients receive comprehensive, unhurried, evidence-based care — enabled by the two pillars above it.
Sustainable Enterprise
Margin protects the mission and funds reinvestment in all the pillars above. Financial discipline is what makes long-term planning possible.
We measure all of it. Staff engagement, GP satisfaction and patient experience are surveyed on a regular cycle, and the numbers are held against clear targets rather than quietly forgotten.
Six questions answered the same way every time
A healthy organisation can answer six questions consistently, at every level. Writing ours down keeps us honest — and tells a doctor exactly what to expect here.
Empower great care
To provide the services and facilities we would want to receive ourselves — so our doctors can deliver exceptional patient care.
Care · Excellence · Kaizen
We tell the truth kindly, we do what we say we will do, and we improve a little every day.
Build the conditions
We build the systems, teams and spaces that let a GP practise world-class medicine — efficiently and sustainably.
Four measured pillars
Team, GP service, patient experience and a sustainable enterprise — each held to a number we publish to ourselves.
Clear goals
We rally around a small set of clear short- and long-term goals, reviewed regularly so the whole team pulls in the same direction.
The team serves the doctors
Our reception, nursing and admin teams exist to serve our GPs and their patients. The GP's part is clinical excellence and genuine care.
Who does well here
Some practices suit some doctors better than others. This is what the GPs who are happiest here tend to have in common, set out now rather than left for you to find in month four.
Clinical excellence and staying curious
Australian general practice gives you a great deal of autonomy. The doctors who do well here treat that as an obligation to keep learning. Consistently poor clinical decisions are the one thing that would bring a tenancy to an end. It is rare, but it is not negotiable.
Reliability
Patients book ahead, and the practice plans rooms and support around your sessions. Telling us early when your availability changes is what keeps that working for everyone.
Working alongside reception and nursing
Reception and nursing are the foundation of this practice, not support staff. The GPs who do best treat them as colleagues.
Comfort with private billing
Your fees are yours to set. What is worth knowing is that the patient base here is built around private billing — around 90% of consultations across the practices — and patients are long used to it. A GP intending to bulk bill most of their book would find the fit awkward, not because anyone would object, but because it runs against what these patients already expect.
If most of that reads like a description of how you already work, we should talk. If a couple of them give you pause, better we both find that out now.
Want to see how this works day to day?
Our information packs go into the detail — facilities, clinical support, how we bill, hours and leave, and what your first weeks look like.
Express your interest