eHealth

Telehealth – assignment of benefits for specialist services

Recently, the Department of Human Services introduced a new option to enable patients who have a telehealth consultation with a specialist to assign their right to a Medicare benefit to the specialist via email. 

This option has been made available to meet the needs of specialists who wish to bulk bill their patients when they are not in the same location and is available for all Telehealth services provided from 1 July 2011 retrospectively.

⇒ ACRRM generally recommends use of videoconferencing solutions which are standards based because, theoretically, such systems are better engineered to achieve practical interoperability between video conferencing products (including State Based Systems used by some specialists for non- admitted patients), and assure image quality and data security.

⇒ In these early days not all specialists are prepared to use/invest in such systems and are more prepared to use systems that they are familiar with such as Face Time, Skype etc..