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Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
Newsflash!
Extension of telehealth announcement was officially made today. We will pour over the details in the coming days but here it is straight from the MBS website at this link.
“Extension of the temporary telehealth and phone co…
Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
As we approach the legislated Covid item sunset date of 30 September 2020, the question on everybody’s lips is – are the Covid items going to continue beyond that date?
No formal announcements yet, but we hear on the grapevine there …
Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
We hope you have all be keeping well, and to our colleagues in Victoria, please know that we are thinking of you.
This, our 50th Covid bulletin, heralds huge changes affecting GPs from Monday, and the relevant Determination hit the regis…
Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt had a nice little announcement yesterday, revealing that since March 13, there have been 10.4 million services delivered to 5.71 million patients by telehealth, with $536.5 million benefits paid, and close to 70,000 healthcare providers hav…
Published in Pulse + IT Magazine
Written by Margaret Faux and Heather Grain on 18 May 2020
Telehealth has bolted away as fast as the colt from old Regret as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, says he wants telehealth to continue post …
Medicare billing app vendor Synapse Medical Services has partnered with virtual GP clinic Phenix Health to provide a mobile telehealth and billing solution for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Doctors can complete a telehealth consult on the Phenix platform, bill it, and receive a respo…
There is a clause for GPs using the new telehealth items: patients defined as ‘susceptible’ to COVID-19 must be bulk-billed (no exceptions).
Is this legal? Margaret Faux, an expert on Medicare and its mysteries, offers her view.
The roll out of new COVID-19 MBS te…
“The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken even Medicare’s pillars to their core and placed more than a virus under a microscope. Bulk billing is now the subject of experimentation in a petri dish of its own.”
Margaret Faux unpacks the constitutional barrier to mandated bulk billing …
Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
Is it still acceptable to say, ‘happy Friday?’ Or is that now so pre-COVID?
Before answering today’s questions, we at Synapse just want to end the week by saying we hope you are all travelling well, and we thank you again, over and…
Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
News flash!
The government has been busy over the weekend, enacting the below raft of Determinations
Health Insurance (Section 3C General Medical Services – COVID-19 Telehealth and Telephone Attendances) Amendment Determination 20…
Dear Doctors and Health Care Workers
Following on from yesterday’s bulletin, as promised, this is an explainer on the law around who can request COVID pathology tests.
We have been informed that some pathology companies, who are probably themselves struggling to keep up w…
A Ministerial Advisory Committee on private health reform has proposed an increase in Medicare rebates as a way of reducing out-of-pocket costs when rural patients require inpatient services. It seems logical but will it really achieve its objective? In this article Margaret expl…
In this podcast recorded live on ABC overnights Margaret Faux discusses the federal government’s plans to privatise Medicare in the context of the 2016 Federal Election….
Medicare expenditure on after hours GP services has risen dramatically in the past year. But does it really keep patients out of Emergency Departments. Margaret Faux chatted with Ellen Leadbeater on 2SER FM’s Think Health about the rise in after hours care. Listen to the full tra…
We have come to expect that our politicians will dismiss each other’s policies as scaremongering when it’s expedient to do so. But we demand more of our journalists, whose job it is to provide balance and perspective. Last night the ABC let us down in this regard when it comes …
Margaret Faux’s recent Croakey post, republished on the Medical Republic, explaining the devastating impact an end to bulk billing will have on patients. Read the full article on medicalrepublic.com.au…
In this recent Croakey article, Margaret Faux explains the real impact of the freeze on patients and how use of the term ‘co-payment’ is misleading and often poorly understood.
Read the story in full on Croakey.org…
