Dear All, I'm commencing research on the new Electronic Medicare Claiming (EasyClaim) system and will be interviewing some folks from Medicare in the coming days.
I'm posting to see if list members have any outstanding questions or concerns about the proposed system, which will assist me to research and prepare a comprehensive article for release in my May edition. In terms of currently available info, I expect most would be aware of Medicare's website: http://www.medicare.gov.au/providers/programs_services/medicare/electronic-c laiming.shtml As well as some basic info, this site contains has a video that outlines the following scenarios: Paying Patients --------------- 1. Practice generates invoice. 2. Patient pays with cash/cheque/eftpos 3. Receptionist swipes EFTPOS card 4. Receptionist enters "some basic information", "5-keystrokes or less". 5. EFTPOS terminal sends info to Medicare Australia 6. Medicare Australia sends EFTPOS terminal approval message. 7. Patients "bank debit card" is swiped. 8. EFTPOS terminal prints receipt and money is transferred to patient. Bulk Bill Claims ---------------- 1. Medicare card swiped. 2. "Information entered into the keypad" by patient. 3. Patient approves benefit to the doctor by pressing "OK". 4. Receipt printed for patient. I've dredged out some questions and comments from previous posts relating to this subject (hopefully the context is obvious): Q) How many more? What is the minimum number and what is the maximum number of keystrokes that specialists' staff will have to enter? Q) Why only on the next working day and not within the next minute? What prevents payment within the next minute? Q) As a patient, how do I know that my consultation details (demographics, medicare no, Items claimed, etc) are not being harvested at the POS by an Insurance Company affiliated with the bank? Comment) Also one of the set of keystrokes is obviously the item number, so there is lots of potential for data entry errors, and there is no information about how they'd be handled. Do you need the patient to swipe their card again, as its obviously the confirmation that the patient is involved in the process? Comment) What is missing from this list is where the patient pays the gap or some lesser portion of the bill: this is neither a "paid patient claim" nor an "unpaid account" as described on the Medicare page. Presumably the patient pays the gap, possibly by credit or debit card (one swipe) and then swipes his or her Medicare card to get the Medicare benefit cheque generated (2 swipes). Comment from me) I note that this week, NAB joined CommBank as the (only 2?) banks signed on for the scheme. Does anyone have any more to add? Thanks, Simon _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
