On Sunday 29 July 2007 22:32:59 Tony Lembke wrote: > Does anyone know if the federal legislation has been changed such > that digitally signed and delivered referral letters are adequate to > satisfy Medicare requirements? > If so, do we know the signing requirements? > Thanks, > Tony Lembke Tony, this has been the subject of many long discussions. A Medicare referral must be either: - printed on a piece of paper and physically signed; or - signed with a HeSA Individual certificate.
GnuPG and HeSA Location certificates don't cut it. Storing a scan doesn't cut it (unless the scanned image file is then signed with a HeSA Individual certificate) I'm unsure about the status of faxes. What's more important, and often get's missed, is the letters we get like this: Dear Psychiatry registrar, Re: Ms. Borderline, DOB 23/3/1984 Thankyou for seeing this 23-year-old woman who told me today she wants to kill herself. Yours sincerely, GP Not that anyone on this list has written such a thing, I'm sure. When I'm in private practice I do *not* want letters like this unless they're attached to something I can assess and section if required, and if you think there's all these specialists out there with a greater interest in electronic messaging, think again. IMHO what is achievable is a URL printed on the bottom of the referral letter which allows the specialist to download the contents of the letter directly into their EMR once having seen the patient, thus populate demographic details of the patient and GP, and (in the fullness of time) medication lists, etc. Ian _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
