Warfarin management

Discover essential guidelines and best practices for effective Warfarin management to ensure optimal patient care and safety.

What is the Warfarin Care Clinic?

Let us take the hassle out of Warfarin dosing for you. We provide exceptional testing services and support referring doctors with the monitoring and management of patients undergoing Warfarin therapy.

We have offered the Warfarin service for over 40 years as part of our commitment to support you and your patients.

Our services include:

  • Contacting the patient regarding their dose in a timely manner
  • Following up abnormal results with the patient and the doctor
  • Reminders should patients be overdue for a blood test
  • Educational and informational material for the patient to assist with their warfarin therapy
  • Liaising with hospital* (post-discharge), nursing home and pharmacy staff in warfarin management.
  • Help manage INR's peri-procedure as requested by the proceduralist.

*When made aware of patient hospital admissions.

The Warfarin Care clinic charter

The Warfarin Care Clinic Charter (see Resources) outlines the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved.

Service fees

To ensure we can continue to deliver this much-needed service and allow us to offer your Warfarin patients comprehensive support and peace of mind, there is a registration fee* to join the service and an annual fee* for enrolled patients.

The annual fee will apply each November. Patients who are registered during the months of July to October may be exempt from the annual fee for November of the same calendar year.

Nursing home residents are exempt from both fees.

Holders of a valid DVA card will not receive an account.Our Pathology will bill the DVA directly for eligible DVA cardholders.

Concessional patients include: Anyone over the age of 65, or under the age of 18yrs.

Anyone who holds a Pension / Health Care / Commonwealth Seniors / DVA Card Please ensure your patient is advised of these fees by having them sign the Informed Financial Consent form and returning this document with the registration request.

*Dependent on Medicare Rebate and/or subject to change without notice.

What the fee covers

  • One of our specialist pathologists monitoring the patient’s Warfarin levels
  • Access to our Warfarin Care team who are trained to deal with Warfarin dosing
  • Access, where appropriate, to Vitamin K at no further cost if required for INR reversal
  • A patient contact process for urgent changes to Warfarin doses
  • A patient contact process for overdue tests for Warfarin patients
  • Access to our Warfarin Support Group via phone and email

Registering your patient

Responsibility for Warfarin dosing remains with the treating LMO until a warfarin registration is accepted by our Pathology (refer to Steps 1-4 on page one of the Registration Document).

You can find the Warfarin Care Clinic patient registration form in the resources section below.

Requests cannot be processed until all information is clarified. Please submit typed requests where possible, missing or illegible information will delay the registration process.

Re-enrol a patient after discharge from hospital

When a patient is admitted into hospital this service is temporarily discontinued and must be reactivated.

To assist in maintaining a safe INR, the dosing Haematologist requires the discharging hospital to supply the Warfarin Care Clinic with an updated health and medication history including recent Warfarin doses and INR results. The medico-legal consequences of blind dosing are an issue that can involve the laboratory and the referring physician.

You can find the Post discharge information update request patient in the resources section below.

Resources

Warfarin steps

Contact patient

Once approved you will receive a Pathology Reference number. Contact the patient to advise them of their first test date.

INR request form

Supply the patient with a signed INR request form – marked Rule 3 exemption; include on the form:

  1. the Pathology Reference number and request one-off FBC & E/LFT’s if no test in the previous 2 months.
  2. If the registering doctor is NOT the primary care doctor then exclude the words Rule 3 and write the primary care doctor as a copy doctor.

Supply the patient with a second request form to take to their primary care doctor and have signed before their second test.

Pre-write the second form: write the name of the primary care doctor into the requesting doctor section, in tests requested write “INR”, ”Rule 3 exemption”, and the “Pathology Reference number".

Warfarin patient registration