Last week’s announcement that the bulk of the July 1 assignment of benefit changes would be delayed was good news for practices, but frustrating for software vendors.
After months of preparation – and in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars – major GP software vendors like Best Practice only found out that the government was pushing back assignment of benefit changes when the broader public did.
Last Thursday, with just eight working days until implementation, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing confirmed that it had significantly watered down the assignment of benefit (AoB) changes scheduled to come into effect on 1 July.
Under the original plans, GPs would be required to obtain their patient’s signature every time they bulk bill and store a record of this for two years. This would have to be repeated on every occasion of care.
Medicare would automatically reject claims where there was no evidence that the patient had signed their consent to be bulk billed.
Indicating that the patient was unable to sign or had given verbal consent would no longer be acceptable.
But under the changes announced last week, verbal assignment of benefit will be accepted in all settings until July 2027, and an “enduring” assignment of benefit would be available for some vulnerable patients from 1 July.
Best Practice Software’s chief technology officer Jessica White told The Medical Republic that while the company was pleased to see the government announce concessions, it was “extremely disappointing” that it had happened so late in the piece.
“This has been a substantial investment for our business,” Ms White said.
“I don’t think people understand how complex the Medicare claiming workflows are, and we embed all of the legislation and all of the rules and the logic into our software to ensure that we support our customers through these changes.
“From our perspective, it’s probably been a million-dollar project.”
According to Ms White, Best Practice has spent the last few months building usable workflows to accommodate the new rules and educating around 5000 customers on how the new processes would work.
The practice management software vendor’s latest iteration had already been distributed to its clients and was programmed to have the new functionality turned on from 1 July.
Best Practice has now had to “pull” its build, meaning that all 1500 clinics which had already switched to the latest version must install a new update in July that will prevent the workflows from automatically activating.
“We’re having to make some changes to cater for verbal assignment and enduring assignment [of benefit],” Ms White said.
“We hope to have that build out in the next couple of weeks, so that our practices can turn on AoB when appropriate for them, and they can handle the new verbal assignment and enduring assignment workflows.
“The biggest issue for us and other vendors is that we don’t have any details around what enduring assignment will entail.”
Other than telling Ms White that it will likely take the form of a template, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has not yet put out any definitive information on what recording an enduring assignment of benefit will look like.
Enduring assignment of benefit was originally scheduled to go live in April 2027, and the version which is going live on 1 July is specifically designed to cater for residential aged care patients, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service patients and other patients registered with MyMedicare.
While no rollout was smooth, Ms White said that assignment of benefit was “one of the hardest government initiatives” she had worked on during her 10 years at Best Practice.
Part of the issue is that software vendors can be an invisible stakeholder. Technically, GPs are the ones who are responsible for making sure their Medicare claims are completed correctly.
“I think the disappointment from us and several other vendors and the Medical Software Industry Association … as well, is we’ve all invested several hours of our time providing feedback to the government, providing in-depth consultation papers, and talking to them about the things that they need to consider to ensure that their project is successful,” Ms White said.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the feedback wasn’t actioned. We’re really looking forward to moving forward. I hope that everyone learns from this.
“I think that the government needs to understand that the software vendors and the peak bodies and everyone [else] does … need to be involved in the co-design and the adoption and education process to make sure that these initiatives are successful.”
