Just a brief summary for telehealth and COVID care MBS claiming. Below are the most relevant factsheets.
Summary of bad news:
- No GPMPS or TCAs or review of care plans available for telephone consults
- No mental health care plans available for telephone consults (though you can do reviews of mental health plans by telephone)
- MBS item 93715 (Covid care) is only available for GPs.
- MBS item 93715 also requires reporting of COVID tests (I think a referral and/or a spreadsheet to DOH would be sufficient)
COVID care and management
http://www.mbsonline.gov.au/internet/mbsonline/publishing.nsf/Content/Factsheet-COVID-Support
Brief summary:
- MBS item 93715 is intended to support medical practitioners who are required to undertake additional measures, including PPE, in order to provide safe face-to-face services to patients with a recent diagnosis of COVID-19, confirmed by either a laboratory PCR test, or a COVID-19 rapid antigen self-test.
- MBS item 93715 is available where a general practitioner (GP) or other medical practitioner (OMP) provides a clinically relevant face-to-face service to a patient who has been recently diagnosed with COVID-19 infection following positive laboratory PCR testing or a positive test via a COVID-19 rapid antigen self-test. The medical practitioner is required to either assist in or confirm the reporting of the positive test result from a rapid antigen self-test through the relevant state or territory reporting system.
- For patients that have received a positive result via a COVID-19 rapid antigen self-test, the medical practitioner is required to either assist in or confirm the reporting of the positive test result through the relevant state or territory reporting system. The medical practitioner is required to make a record in the patient’s notes confirming that the result has been reported.
- The service cannot be delegated to another health professional. Item 93715 cannot be provided in conjunction with telehealth services
Telehealth info:
A brief summary:
- MBS telehealth items introduced on a temporary basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will now be permanent.
- Telehealth services provided by GPs, medical practitioners, nurse practitioners, participating midwives, allied health providers and dental practitioners in the practice of oral and maxillofacial surgery services will continue.
- A new extended telephone consultation item for attendances 20 minutes or longer for patients in rural and remote communities (Modified Monash 6 and 7 regions) will be introduced.(this better, but we had also requested this for Darwin, which also experiences connectivity issues, and also for cultural and affordability reasons)
- AMSs and ACCHSs remain exempt from the established relationship requirement
- Patient-end support services by GPs and OMPs linked to pre-COVID specialist video consultations in regional and remote areas will be removed from 1 January 2022. However, optometry, practice nurse and Aboriginal health worker patient-end support items will be retained.
- Mental health:
- 4 psychological therapy items for clinical psychologist services;
- 20 Focused Psychological Strategies items for services provided by a psychologist, GP, non-specialist medical practitioner, occupational therapist or social worker.
- New auditing measures, postponed to July 2022:
- 80/20 rule: includes GP face-to-face, video and telephone consultations, excluding vaccine suitability assessments. Any GP who provides more than a combined 80 services on 20 or more days in a 12 month period will be referred to the Professional Services Review (PSR).
- 30/20 rule: for telephone consultations: Any GP or consultant physician who provides more than 30 telephone consultations on 20 or more days in a 12 month period will be referred to the PSR.
Handy tip
One health service reported that they have successfully claimed and been paid for claiming 2 MBS items in one consultation – smoking cessation and another MBS service not related to smoking.
Factsheet-Continuing-telehealth-Mental-Health.25.01.22
Factsheet-COVID-19-GPs-OMP.07.01.22v4