Oliver Frank wrote:
Thinus van Rensburg wrote:
Bloody ridiculous - I shred mine after backups have been verified - why
should there be different rules regarding recordkeeping between
specialists
and GPs?
Because the specialist is issuing accounts with Medicare item numbers
that entitle the patient to claim a higher Medicare benefit for the
specialist's services, on the basis that the patient has been referred
to the specialist. The federal government has rules about what
constitutes a valid referral for Medicare benefit purposes.
The onus therefore is on the specialist to keep and be able to show
evidence that the patient was referred in accordance with the
government's requirements for Medicare benefit purposes. A valid
referral for Medicare benefits purposes has to be 'signed', either by
hand on paper,or electronically with the referring doctor's individual
digital certificate.
As I understand it, is is up to the medical specialist to decide whether
he or she believes that a referral is valid for Medicare benefits
purposes. If he or she believes that it is not valid, he or she can
still see the patient and charge whatever fee he or she feels is
appropriate, but can't use the 'referred rate' Medicare item numbers on
the account.
We innocent GPs ;-) don't need to worry about all this unless and until
our specialist colleagues start refusing to accept our referrals on the
grounds that they are not valid for Medicare benefits purposes. For
some services, such as some cosmetic treatments or surgery, no Medicare
benefit is payable in any case and the question of validity of referral
under Medicare is irrelevant.
Alles klar?
Oliver, Duncan et al,
This approach BY HIC is just more evidence of how confused there
thinking and policy implementation about electronic referrals is.
If a GP is sending a referral via secure E-mail signed with his HeSA PKI
individual key, as users of Medical Objects are now doing on the
Sunshine Coast and other places, there will be no paper copy, nor does
there need to be.
On the other hand Ross Davey's E-mail last week, quoted below, made it
clear that Medicare is reducing support to developers regarding the use
of these keys, apparently outside submitting claims.
They can't have it both ways.
Ross Davey wrote:
Government Drops the Ball on Healthcare e-security
________________________________________
* *
Since the moving of Medicare Australia away from the health portfolio into the
Human Services portfolio, we have been told that support for development,
deployment and technical support for use of PKI in the health sector has been
dropped for any applications other than those that support Medicare-related
business.
I am told that Medicare Australia no longer will invest resources in supporting
the use of their PKI infrastructure for strictly healthcare-related
applications. Medicare will simply concentrate on use of PKI for Medicare ‘core
business’; which is interpreted to mean insurance-related applications.
This leaves initiatives that have adopted HeSA PKI for security in clinical
areas out in the cold and largely unsupported both technically and
strategically.
HeSA, the organisation that established an infrastructure for deploying PKI
certificates, certificate tokens and also negotiated and oversaw the
Certification Authorities and registration process, has been absorbed back into
Medicare Australia and told to focus on ‘core business’.
There are quite a number of initiatives around Australia that have adopted
HeSA’s PKI technology in healthcare environments on the understanding that this
would be the anointed mechanism for encrypting health data and for applying
digital signing. They now find that unless the application is related to
Medicare claiming, their initiatives are receiving minimal support, they cant
get answers to important and urgent technical matters, and they cant be assured
that the infrastructure will continue to be provided.
-------------------------------
Ross Davey
CEO
ArgusConnect Pty Ltd
Ph: 03 5335 2220
Mob: 0417 548608
Web: www.argusconnect.com.au
-------------------------------
Greg
--
Greg Twyford
Information Management & Technology Program Officer
Canterbury Division of General Practice
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph.: 02 9787 9033
Fax: 02 9787 9200
PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL
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