How GPs Can Use Radly With Their Patients

Every GP knows the gap between writing an imaging referral and the scan actually happening. The patient leaves with a piece of paper, faces an unfamiliar task - which clinics do this scan? what will it cost? who can see me soon? - and a meaningful share never book at all. The follow-up consultation then starts with "did you end up getting that scan done?"

Radly (radly.com.au) is a free platform for patients that closes this gap for Victorian medical imaging. Patients search by scan type and suburb, compare clinics on the things that actually decide their choice - bulk billing, price, wait time, location - and contact or book the clinic that suits them.

For the GP, nothing about your workflow needs to change: you write the referral exactly as you always have. The intervention is one sentence as you hand it over: "Look the scan up on radly.com.au to find a clinic that bulk bills near you."

The core patient flow is deliberately simple. The patient enters the scan type - MRI, CT, ultrasound, X-ray and other modalities - and their suburb, and Radly returns the Victorian clinics that perform that study nearby.

From the results, patients can compare clinics side by side on:

• Bulk-billing availability for the scan in question • Indicative per-scan pricing, where clinics charge privately • Wait-time indications, helping patients weigh a shorter wait against a lower fee or a closer location • Distance and location

This comparison step is where referral follow-through is won or lost. A patient who assumed an MRI would be unaffordable, and can now see a bulk-billing or lower-cost option in front of them, books. A patient facing a long wait at the clinic nearest home can see the practice two suburbs over with capacity this week. For urgent-ish referrals, that visibility complements the triage advice in our urgent versus routine referrals guide.

Plenty of patients - and family members helping them - do their health admin on a computer rather than a phone. Radly's desktop site handles the referral photo elegantly: when a referral image is needed for a booking request, the site displays a QR code; the patient scans it with their phone camera, which opens a simple upload page; they photograph the referral on the phone, and the image lands back in their desktop session automatically.

No emailing photos to yourself, no cables, no transferring files - a genuine friction-remover for less technical patients, and equally useful for the adult child organising a parent's scan from their own laptop while the parent holds the referral.

If you have a practice website or patient information sheet that mentions Radly, it is worth noting that both phone-first and desktop-plus-QR paths exist, so patients pick whichever matches how they operate. The patient keeps their original paper referral for the clinic - the photo attaches to their booking request, it is not a replacement.

Navigating imaging is hardest for patients with limited English - precisely the patients most likely to abandon a referral. Radly's interface is available in English, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic and Greek, reflecting Victoria's largest language communities, so a patient can search for clinics, compare prices and read practical details in their own language.

This pairs usefully with another piece of clinic-profile data: the languages spoken at each clinic. A Vietnamese-speaking patient can both use Radly in Vietnamese and preferentially choose a clinic where Vietnamese is spoken at reception - which materially changes their experience of attending, from booking through to understanding preparation instructions.

For practices with significant CALD populations, this is arguably Radly's highest-value feature to mention. The one-sentence handover adapts naturally: "the website works in Vietnamese - radly.com.au." Practice staff and family members can also drive the search on the patient's behalf in whichever language they share. See our patient guide to finding clinics in your language for shareable detail.

Each Radly clinic profile carries the practical information that decides whether an appointment actually works for a given patient:

• Opening hours - including early, late or weekend availability for working patients • Accessibility information - relevant for patients with mobility aids, wheelchairs or transport constraints • Languages spoken at the clinic • Parking availability - a genuine deciding factor for patients driving to appointments, particularly older patients • Bulk billing and pricing, and the modalities offered

Folding Radly into practice life takes little: a line in your referral handover script, a mention on your practice website or after-visit summary, and making reception staff aware so they can point patients to it instead of reading out clinic phone numbers. Some GPs simply say: "look your scan up on radly.com.au and it'll find the right clinics for you."

Radly is free for patients, and no GP sign-up is required for any of the above. For the referral-writing side of the equation, see our referral best practices guide.