If gap payments only were accepted en masse by all practices then the
millions of cqs being delivered all around the country to millions of
pts might finally spur the govt into gap billing action? :)
(the inconvenience is then borne by the pt and medicare- not practices?)
Unsure of the process but it would certainly make an impact in this
election year.
fee
Rob Hosking wrote:
Oliver Frank wrote:
I asked a couple of weeks ago whether any practices had decided to not
to bank Medicare 'pay doctor' cheques and instead wait for Medicare to
deposit the money into their bank accounts under the 90 day
unpresented cheque scheme. I am seriously thinking of implementing
this in my practice. It would save our staff from trying to work out
whether to try banking each Medicare 'pay doctor' cheque or not,
because we have deposited cheques that patients have brought in a few
weeks after receiving them and been charged an unpaid 'cheque fee' by
the bank when the bank found that Medicare had already cancelled the
cheque under the 90 day scheme.
Another practice in our town does this. Everyone only pays the gap.90
days later the rebate is deposited into their account. This reverses the
benefit for shorter payment times referred to earlier.
This is all so ridiculous. In this election year we should all be
lobbying (including AMA and other representative organisations) for some
common sense to this insurance quagmire. Gap payments should be allowed.
The government has to get past this idealistic nonsense. The private
insurance companies do this so very well with their on-line claiming for
extras cover. We have been using it a bit lately for physio and
optometry (teenage kids) and it is fantastic. Swipe your card and pay
the gap. Simple. No need to involve the banks with deposits into the
patient's account.
Surely the extra work involved in EFTPOS claiming classifies as extra
red tape. What happened to the findings of the Red Tape Task Force? All
we are seeing is an alteration in the workload around authority
prescriptions (which sounds like it could even be worse than now).
Perhaps we need some industrial action. Should we refuse to use their
on-line systems and mail in manual claiming again? If we could get
united (I know -herding cats!) it would only need to be for a few days,
and then repeat the performance later. Short term minor disruption to
our cash flow, but major headache to Medicare.
Rob Hosking
Bacchus Marsh.
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