Bulk billing for telehealth-specialists, consultant physicians and consultant psychiatrists

Even though you and the patient aren’t at the same location during a telehealth video consultation, the patient’s signature is still needed on the Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form under Section 20A of the Health Insurance Act.

There are three ways you can get the patient’s signature:

1.    The supporting practitioner can get the patient to sign the Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form at their end and send the form to you.

2.    You can send the completed Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form to the patient to sign and return to you.

3.    You can get an email agreement from the patient.

Email agreement

For a patient to assign their right to a Medicare benefit to you by email, you need to complete the following process

Step one

At the time of the telehealth video consultation, tell the patient you wish to bulk bill Medicare for the service, and they will need to:

• agree to the service being bulk billed
• check the details in the email sent to their nominated email address, and
• reply to your email which will be considered a signature agreeing to assign the benefit.

Step two

Before lodging the claim, you need to send an email to the patient that includes:

• the details of the service:
  • item numbers or description of services
  • benefit amount for both the base and derived fee items
  • date and time of services
  • patient’s name (Medicare card number must not be included)
  • practitioner’s name (provider number must not be included), and
• the following statement:
  • If you (the patient) agree to the assignment of the Medicare benefit directly to the provider (bulk bill), reply to this email including:
    • the word ‘YES’ in the body of the reply email, and
    • your (the patient’s) name.
• The following privacy note:
  • Your personal information is protected by law, including the Privacy Act 1988, and is collected for a Social Security, Family Assistance, Medicare, Child Support and CRS purpose, depending on the service or payment concerned. This information may be required by law or collected voluntarily when you apply for services or payments. Your information is used for the assessment and administration of payments and services and may also be used within Human Services; or disclosed to other parties or agencies, where you have provided consent or it is required or authorised by law.

Note: due to privacy reasons, the Medicare card number and provider number must not be included in the email.

Step three

Once you have received a reply email from the patient with the correct information:

• complete a Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form [PDF, 160Kb] noting ‘email agreement’* in the signature block
• submit the claim to Human Services in accordance with the MBS
• send a completed copy of the Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form to the patient, and
• keep the email with the patient’s consent and email signature (in hard copy or electronic form) for audit purposes for at least two years.

*For manually lodged claims only. For electronic claims, the email signature doesn’t need to be noted, but you must keep the patient’s email consent on file.

Note: when you note ‘email agreement’ on the manual Bulk Bill (assignment of benefit) form, you are acknowledging you have followed the steps above.

This process has been developed to comply with Section 10 of the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 which outlines the steps to be taken for an electronic signature to be recognised. It also meets the legislative requirement of a signature being needed to assign a Medicare benefit.

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Last updated: 5 July, 2012

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