Hmm How flame retardant is the suit? Medicare sacks or plans to sack 200 staff so we can do the work for them which none of us would need to do if they allowed gap billing. They will save 200-400 million per year, give 50 million to the banks and guess what they then shaft the doctors and staff in medical centres and pay nothing to us. Sound fair??
Bye the way, I Love the new AMA boss- sound like she will actually do something for doctors rather than simply rubber stamping everything that comes out of Canberra. Regards Mr James Bishop Longevity Medical 8 Jackson Court Doncaster East 3109 Ph 03 98482009 Mobile 0413 582615 Fax 03 98407064 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Neil McAliece Sent: Friday, 27 July 2007 12:40 PM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: Eftpos claiming .... was [GPCG_TALK] this result was obvious to us Hi Liz/All, I've been very absent from the list for a while. A filter has been shuffling messages into a folder I haven't been looking at. Sorry if this has been covered before. The way this system was presented to me by Medicare was as a complement to the existing claiming integration in billing packages or possibly an alternative for a small practice who didn't run any computerised billing currently. It's not really a good system for a busy group practice as the only method of claiming for bulk bill. Some practices might want to use it along side their current electronic claiming in billing as a patient convenience, only using it for private bill patient claims. This is likely to be in busy practices in areas that don't have a Medicare office (or maybe for disabled or elderly patients to save them the trouble of getting to the Medicare office). Another issue that goes against it as the only solution at a practice is that it doesn't do Vet Affairs (though that might have changed? or probably will change) One comment in the article wasn't correct. It doesn't need a separate dedicated eftpos terminal, though you do need to be a member of a participating bank (I'm not sure how smaller credit unions will go etc). The bank may have to change your current terminal if it doesn't already have a smart card slot (in preparation for new medicare cards). There should be no cost passed onto the practice for replacing, reprogramming or using a terminal. The eftpos idea may be in part due to previous practice feedback that the patient claims integrated into billing software was impractical for EFT to the patient (cheque to patient is fast and easy). Legally the systems weren't allowed to store account details, so you had to ask the patient for their bsb and account number and key it in every time. As a result few practices offer it to patients. Just for patient claims, while doing all of your bulk bill through your billing software, it might be an alright solution. Integration was mentioned in the article. This becomes an issue if staff have done some bulk bill claims on the terminal and some in their billing software. Reconciliation in your PC based accounts becomes more tricky and time consuming. HCN announced that PS3 would be the first program offering integration. I don't know how it will work, but maybe other vendors will follow. I guess it would have been nice if a patient ATM card could have been swiped on a usb reader connected to a billing PC to get around the account keying. That would have saved re-keying item numbers into a terminal. I don't know if that is ruled out by law or technical issues (or both). This is where I pull on my flame retardant suit..... I'm a bit unsure about practices (or peak bodies) demanding payment for doing the work of Medicare offices. It's entirely optional and the amount of processing time is less than for medicare office staff. Add to that electronic systems are saving most practices time in their bulk bill claims compared to the old paper claims. Some practices have put it to me that they really want it from a customer service point of view. These have been practices in towns with multiple practices, or solos in towns with no Mc office. Some see it as a convenience that will attract patients to their practice (or stop them from leaving if other practices offer it and they don't). Putting on my cynical cap..... What might be a little crappy and sinister about this, and it may be partly due to an election coming up..... While the system is optional and useful for some, when it goes live it is going to be advertised nation wide. "Hey, imagine what it will be like not having to battle your way to the Medicare office in your lunch break" (not from an ad script, but I wouldn't be surprised with an election coming up). So even if you decide not to opt in, it could cost a lot of staff time. Your staff might be wasting a metric crapload of time explaining to grumpy patients why they still need to visit a Medicare office. I'm eagerly waiting to see what the advertising wording will be. Without carpet bombing advertising (guessing about the carpet bombing, but it is an election year) I'm reasonably happy with the concept (swiping a card for bank details into something like Pracsoft would be better). It may evolve and improve (billing software integration). With the upcoming advertising, I'm worried that practices who chose not to do it might be seen as the bad guys by their patients. Neil ----- Original Message ----- From: "Elizabeth Dodd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "gpcg talk" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 27 July 2007 06:25:03 AM (GMT+1000) Australia/Sydney Subject: [GPCG_TALK] this result was obvious to us http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/26/1989167.htm -- I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. - Monty Python _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
