Greg Twyford wrote:
My understanding, and I'm happy to be corrected, is that:
RACGP standards require electronic clinical messages to be encrypted.
Correct. In addition the new criteria for tier 1 of the IM/IT PIP
payments requires encryption of clinical data being transmitted.
Medicare and an Act of Parliament require electronic referrals to be
digitally signed using the HeSA individual key to be a valid referral
for Medicare rebate purposes.
The Medicare Australia Website at:
http://www9.health.gov.au/mbs/fullDisplay.cfm?type=note&q=6&qt=NoteID
states:
"6.2.1 A "referral" is a request to a specialist or a consultant
physician for investigation, opinion, treatment and/or management of a
condition or problem of a patient or for the performance of a specific
examination(s) or test(s).
(..)
(ii) the instrument of referral must be in writing by way of a
letter or note to a specialist or to a consultant physician and must be
signed and dated by the referring practitioner"
This does not say that the signing has to be digital - probably because
they think that we are still in the 1960s. Where have you seen any
reference to referrals having to be signed digitally?
Your 'hundreds or thousands of doctors around Australia' are playing an
interesting game. How long before a Z-car turns up on someone's doorstep?
I am willing to bet you a bottle of Cooper's Ale (Sparkling, thanks)
that it will be never, because I believe that Medicare would not dare to
try to prosecute a specialist *only* because he or she used 'referred
rate' item numbers when the electronic referral was not digitally
signed. I believe that the only context in which Medicare Australia
would mention this in a prosecution would be if there was also fraud,
that is, the patients had not in fact been referred at all or their
referral had expired.
--
Oliver Frank, general practitioner
255 North East Road, Hampstead Gardens, South Australia 5086
Phone 08 8261 1355 Fax 08 8266 5149 Mobile 0407 181 683
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
