There are a couple of big things happening this month (and a couple of things that've happened in the intervening weeks), so here we go...

Thanks in large part to the more targeted approach for Boosters and Children's clinics, we've seen a significant number of childen aged 5-11 vaccinated across the SLHD, and a decent contribution made by ourselves to that overall number. At the same time, opportunistic vaccination, combined with the more robust booster clinics have meant that we've been able to provide upwards of 100 doses per week.

As a result, our clinic numbers moving in to May will start to drop, meaning that staff already allocated will be able to return to regluar clinical practice. The updated roster is available by clicking on the button below.

The changes will be as follows moving forward from March and beyond:

• Paediatric Clinics (5-11) will drop to ONE (1) dose one clinic per month. This will likely end up on a Saturday morning for parents, and will move into combined clinics in late March/early April
• Adult booster clinics (for patients aged 16 and over) will also drop to ONE (1) clinic per fortnight from 1 per week. However, this may likely be reviewed should another variant (sorry) or demand from younger patients increase. We'll also continue to label eligible patients with the 'Vax Candidate' icon within the appointment book.

When billing, please remember that the BOOSTER shot must be billed as both the 93644 AND the 93666. If done opportunistically after another consult, these must be labelled as unrelated, and bulk billed.

The Twelve Month Rule...

With telehealth continuing and with the volume of community cases of COVID still averaging at several thousand per day (in NSW), the general rules for Telehealth are as follows:

• A patient must have attended at least once in the last twelve months to qualify for medicare-rebatable telehealth. This visit could be with another practitioner at the practice, OR with the nurses for a vaccination, dressing change or BP check, but must have happened within the last twelve months (blood collection does NOT qualify as DHM is not part of the CSMP Practice).
• Item number 97246 has been officially reinstated (Level C Telephone Telehealth).
• Patients isolating due to COVID (i.e. a registered positive case) are exempt from the 12 month rule, as well as: patients under 12 months of age, OR are receiving an urgent after hours service (if an urgent service, must be the appropriate MBS item number). There is still some debate as to whether the exemption applies if the GP is in isolation.
• Patients that are currently overseas CAN NOT access Medicare services whilst overseas. These must be privately billed using the PHCON items.
• The 30/20 Rule will (potentially) come into effect from July, 2022. For more info, please click HERE.

For the most updated version of the CSMP MBS Cheat Sheet, please click on the button below:

To help allow patients without smartphones to access scripts as well as those on restricted medications, we have updated the online referral and script portal with the option to eScript to PHARMACY, rather than eScript to EMAIL (which has had issues of reliability for patients using hotmail or live.com addresses for eScripts outside of consult).

Most of our patients on S8 medications will have the following in their demographics information to allow you to send the eScript to their pharmacy:

We've now updated our contacts, so patients requesting scripts to:

• Chemist Warehouses
• Cincotta Pharmacies
• Blooms Chemists
• Terry White Pharmacies

are now all able to have these scripts sent directly, regardless of the location of the specific franchise!

OVERSEAS PATIENTS: as a Medicare number is required for Best Practice to find a Health Identifier (the number required to send eScripts), we've been able to circumvent this by finding non-Medicare patients HI numbers fro their COVID vaccination certificates. If a patient is missing an HI number, please let admin know so we can add this number from their COVID certificate and enable eScripts for them!

• Doctors Committee - Thursday, 10th Feb
• Accreditation Site Visit - Wednesday, 23rd Feb
• Practice Lunch - Friday, 18th Feb

Michael and Viv welcomed a baby girl (Sophie) on 20th January - we all wish them the best as they begin this chapter together!