A practice can put risk management strategies in place to reduce the risk of non compliance and shared debt recovery.
- n
- Explain to the registrar what shared debt is and why you will be auditing the billings nn
- Give the registrar access to education on correct billing processes.u00a0 This might be MBS online education or arranging training from someone who knows the MBS inside out. nn
- Explain to them how to contact Medicare to check if they are billing correctly. nn
- Be educated yourself in what items can be billed together and what makes a billing compliant. n
- n
- The practice cannot tell a registrar what to bill if that billing is not appropriate. nn
- The registrar must do their own billing, not give the authority to bill for him/her to administrative staff. nn
- Patient consultation notes should be consistent with the items charged.u00a0 If a patient was seen twice in the one day for different conditions and billed accordingly, this should be clear in the notes. nn
- Make sure that employment agreements have been properly drafted in consideration of shared debt. n
This scheme was put in place in part to protect doctors from practices that have aggressive billing policies that may result in systematic inaccuracies in billing and also to improve the number of incorrect billings that occur as a result of deliberate or unintentional actions.
nnThe result for practices is that some care needs to be taken to ensure registrars know how to bill correctly and to audit billings to make sure they are billing what they are entitled to and at the same time minimising compliance errors.
nnDate reviewed: 24 July 2024
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