Medicare Changes...

Program Renewals from 1st January, 2024

Most Medicare programs automatically renew at the beginning of the calendar year, rather than after a 12 month period. MHCP access for patients resets, meaning patients become eligible for 10 sessions in this calendar year provided a referral is in place and they've had an MHCP done at some point in their history. Please also note that the current requirements for MHCP mean that you can stipulate the full 10 sessions from an initial referral if clinically appropriate!

Secondly, Closing The Gap (CTG) registrations all need to be renewed from 1st January for patients to be eligible for their co-claiming benefits. CSMP will be marking patients with the CTG icon for GPs to discuss this renewal (use the BP shortcut .CTG to populate the prerequisite confirmation within their record). Once a patient has agreed (or declined), please message me in Teams with the patient's name so I can complete/confirm registration!

New Medicare Items...

No new Medicare changes for Jan, 2024



The MBS Quick Reference Guide has been updated to include these items. Please check the Teams General Channel for more information!

Practice Workflow Changes/Improvements...

My Favourites - there is now a 'favourites' tab within the Clinical channel of Teams. This document will hopefully fill out with preferred providers for a range of specialities making things easier for clinical staff to refer to providers based on location and sub-speciality.

The tab will be reviewed weekly and contacts not included in the BP database will be updated in order to streamline the referral writing process.

Chronic Disease Clinics (UPDATE) - Patient lists for the chronic disease clinics for 2024 will be distributed via Teams to GPs this week. Please feel free to peruse this list and mark patients that you feel would be appropriate to recall for either CDM or Health Assessments on the coming weekend clinics. You can nominate additional sessions for the clinics using the Change of Routine form in the practice web portal!

If you have any further queries or preferences you'd like to give before booking these clinics, please let me know!

Shingrix Clinic - now the initial rush has passed and we have managed to stockpile additional doses for the shingrix vaccine, please feel free to send patients to the nursing staff when appropriate! The clinics will phase out from February to move into general nursing appointments.

Best Practice - now with clearer MyMedicare Registrations! Please see the images below to see how BP now records a patient's MyMedicare status!

Coming Events...