From January 2026, patients will have the option to pre-assign consent to be bulk billed.
With less than six months until the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing introduces a streamlined bulk billing consent process, the race is on for vendors to create web-based pre-assignment of benefit processes.
The assignment of benefit modernisation saga began in 2023 with a scathing report from the Australian National Audit Office admonishing the potential fraud risk that DoHDA had opened up by allowing telehealth patients to give verbal consent to be bulk billed during a consult.
This kicked off a chain of events whereby GPs were told they must record patient consent to be bulk billed in writing at each appointment, either by asking the patient to send an email explicitly noting their consent or filling out an additional form to send to the patient prior to claiming any rebates.
Following a small GP riot, health minister Mark Butler announced that a modernisation process was in the pipeline and that DoHDA would not be pursuing any broad compliance campaigns related to the recording of consent in a telehealth consult in the interim.
The necessary legislation passed parliament in mid-2024 and is expected to kick into effect from 9 January 2026.
While the department is yet to consult on its final draft regulations, it has said that “new digital options to assign benefits when booking a service are expected to be popular, with potential online- and web-based solutions”.
Paper-based forms will still be valid for practices that wish to use them.
At a webinar last week, booking engine HotDoc unveiled plans to have a pre-assignment workflow ready for action by January.
“We’ll have a really proactive consent collection, so [HotDoc] will actually try to gather that assignment of benefit consent before the appointments are even attended, through our booking platform,” HotDoc chief customer and product officer Agnes So said.
“When they book online, or maybe when they’re reminded of their booking as well, they’re actually going to get the opportunity to pre-assign their benefit.
“If, for some reason, consent isn’t collected up front and they are eligible for that particular benefit, we will still have that post-visit backup option that we already have in play, so nothing falls through the cracks.”
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From the second half of 2026, Ms So said the booking engine was looking at introducing enduring assignment of benefit for patients who are regularly bulk billed, so they wouldn’t have to consent each separate time.
HotDoc has recently been on the receiving end of GP ire after introducing a pilot telehealth-on-demand option for patients.
While it initially paused this trial, it has since recommenced.
