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An Extension to the Medicare Web Services Deadline

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The Medicare Web Services deadline has been extended, in advice provided by Services Australia.

A large number of our practices have already upgraded to Medicare Web Services-enabled versions of their software prior to the original cutoff date of the 19th of June, 2022. These practices are now successfully operating under the new Medicare Web Services framework.

For practices that are yet to upgrade to a Medicare Web Services-enabled version of software, Services Australia have provided a grace period, extending the Medicare Web Services deadline to the 28th of August, 2022.

Services Australia have advised that this grace period will NOT be extended further.

Services Australia will be contacting practices that have not yet upgraded to Medicare Web Services in the next few weeks, to ensure that practices are in the process of transitioning to the new framework.

The latest versions of Bp Premier and Bp VIP.net are both fully compliant with Medicare Web Services functionality.

Do not delay your upgrade to Medicare Web Services. Delaying your upgrade may result in longer support call times and being unable to claim if you have not switched over once the grace period ends.

Need Further Assistance?

For further information or advice on this matter, you can contact our Software Support team on 1300 40 1111 (Australia), or 0800 40 1111 (New Zealand), and selecting Bp General Products (Option 1/1) at the menu.

You can also contact us via our dedicated Medicare Web Services email address: medicarewebservices@bpsoftware.net.

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Are You Running a Thriving Practice?

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A thriving practice is difficult to define.

Every practice owner and manager wants to run a successful practice, but it can be challenging to define and measure what success looks like. Especially across a busy practice that provides dozens of services. Some owners look to expand and buy into other practices within their local metropolitan area, while some are focussed on a single rural practice. Many are simply focused on the output of their practice, and the impact they can make by providing care for their patients. There are many different objectives and criteria that one can measure success by, however, they can all be measured in one form or another.

Defining Success

The first step in knowing if you’re operating a thriving practice is to understand your overarching business goals and objectives. From there it’s up to you to define what success looks like for you, your team and your community.

Breaking down goals into short term and long-term goals can help set perspective for you and your team and is a strategy that has worked for dozens of practices. For example, your long-term goal may be to become the most trusted care provider in your area, and a short-term goal that may facilitate that, is to focus on expanding your Chronic Disease Manage (CDM) services or getting first time patients back in for more regular health checks. Consider what you want to achieve within your practice over the next five years, and what you can accomplish in the next 6-12 months to get you there.

Measuring Success

Once you’ve set your sights on the next big step for your team, you’ll want to find ways of measuring and reporting on your progress.

The best way of measuring patient satisfaction and quality of service is through a combination of anecdotal feedback from patients and data found in your practice management system, many great insights can be surfaced from your best practice data. Metrics are a fantastic way of measuring the impact you’re having as a business, but when it comes to actionable insight, it’s also important to collect patient feedback. Make an effort to regularly survey patients and ask for feedback on how you can improve both the services you offer and the experience patients are left having. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular method of collecting and analysing feedback, as it will give you a singular score you can assess week on week, while also giving patients the opportunity to provide written feedback as well. Make sure to track this for your quality improvements, for instance, patient feedback regarding QI1.2 of the RACGP standards in the 5th edition.

As for metrics you can track, it’s recommended that practices look at billings per hour, diary wait time, patients per hour, and utilisation. These will provide you with a solid overview of your usage of the MBS schedule, how often you run on time, how well your team is equipped to service patients, and how full your diaries are.

Where Do You Find Opportunities for Improvement?

How are you performing? It’s a difficult question to answer. With reports you can often look backwards, and at historical trends. Compare your billings for instance, to the same period last year. Additionally, you can spend all the time in the world creating forecasts and looking forward. However, when we have data, it is vital to have context accompanying it, and to have targets in mind.

What we have lacked in the medical industry is the ability to look horizontally. For instance, you will know that you’re a bulk-billing practice in metro Brisbane, so how do you compare across other bulk-billing practices? Is a billing per hour of $302 across your cohort of GPs good for a bulk-billing practice?

It’s answering these questions and de-siloing General Practice that is to vitally important within the industry. It’s one of the major features, Touchstone, that Cubiko has been working on. For the first time practices around Australia are able to compare and contrast their business metrics to like-for-like practices.

Before Touchstone, available data on how a practice is performing against a national benchmark was very hard to come by. The government intermittently releases state and national numbers on MBS items. While this is useful information, you’re comparing your practice against state and national benchmarks across the board, rather than like-for-like practices.

By understanding how your practice is performing against similar practices you can celebrate the successes. If you see that your practice is performing well, share it with the team. If you’re wondering where improvements can possibly be made, looking horizontally at benchmarks can also be useful. But always be wary of benchmarks that aren’t representative of the practice you want to run.

So, is your practice thriving? It’s a question that might be easier to answer with the right tools.

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Work Smarter Not Harder. How BetterConsult Can Help!

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Work smarter, not harder when it comes to offering a great practice-patient experience.

Practices today have to deal with never-ending challenges: overworked doctors, nurses and practice staff, never-ending admin burden, day-to-day patient inefficiencies (“Sorry, I forgot to get my medical certificate and repeat script when I saw the doctor!”)…. all whilst still trying to deliver a great patient-doctor experience.

Dana Tse, Practice Manager at Campsie Medical Centre, decided to try BetterConsult’s patient intake questionnaire to help with her practice’s workflow management. “Some of the challenges I face as a practice manager are time management, making sure that our patients are seen on time, and making sure that our doctors and staff have a good work-life balance,” she says. “We tried BetterConsult as we had nothing to lose – it was free. And the outcome has been a better experience for staff, doctors and patients”.

So how does BetterConsult help you work smarter, not harder?

BetterConsult is a patient pre-consultation questionnaire fully integrated into Best Practice (it works seamlessly alongside online booking systems). It is simple and easy for patients to use and starts when they receive an SMS 24 hours prior to their appointment. The questionnaire captures the patient’s agenda and key clinical symptoms. The patient’s answers are then translated into a concise clinical summary for the doctor or nurse to review at the time of the consultation.

Doctors use the information provided by BetterConsult to practice at the top of their license and better plan their days and individual consultations, allowing them to have a more personal consultation with their patients; spending less time typing and facing the screen and more time discussing their concerns and focusing on treatment and management.

Campsie GP, Dr Bernard Tse, said BetterConsult “allows me to have a more personal consultation with my patients by spending less time typing and facing the screen, and more time actually discussing what the patient’s concerns are.”

Carseldine Family Clinic’s Dr Leah Ahchay says, “BetterConsult is extremely beneficial to my patients because when they enter the room, I’m going to feel more confident with my diagnosis, I’m going to have a baseline with which to assess their symptoms, and I’m going to give them some written information as they leave the room because I’ve been able to prepare for that consult”.

Dr Tamsin Franklin, principal GP of Turn the Corner Medical Clinic, commented “I am sure all doctors have had the ‘near miss’, where we have asked for clarification regarding a symptom, only to reveal something with great importance which had almost been missed. BetterConsult helps to reduce this likelihood. It also frees up time so that concerning symptoms can be fully explored, and less concerning symptoms can be triaged. Perhaps for another day.”

BetterConsult integrates seamlessly into BP Premier, and developer HealthShare, a Best Practice Gold Partner, provides a dedicated customer success manager to guide users through setup and use.

BetterConsult is priced as a freemium offering, meaning there is no cost for practices or doctors to use the product. Practices can optionally choose to pay for custom questions to be added to the questionnaire if they are running practice-specific clinical campaigns.

BetterConsult is also being funded by health organisations to run patient and doctor education campaigns that support improved patient health outcomes (similar to patient leaflets and posters in the waiting room).

A recent practice study by Cubiko found that practices using BetterConsult saw up to an 80% reduction in patient DNA (Did Not Arrive) rates.

Over 3M questionnaires have been completed around Australia with thousands of doctors now using BetterConsult. Find out more about how you can improve your patient engagement and communication with BetterConsult here.

When it comes to offering a great practice-patient experience; work smarter, not harder.

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Time is Precious: Streamlining Aged Care Support

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Streamlining Aged Care Support

Time is a precious commodity in any general practice, let alone during a pandemic, so it’s essential to adopt the technology that’s designed to provide you and your patients with a great service.  

The Australian Government’s My Aged Care service is the entry point for senior Australians to access government-funded aged care support and services, with demand for this service set to increase in line with an aging population.

The Department of Health recognises the central role General Practitioners (GPs) play in managing health and well-being concerns for senior Australians, particularly in the community settings.  As such, GPs can make referrals directly to My Aged Care for support services. 

Each year, My Aged Care receives around 250,000 referrals from health professionals, with referrals from hospitals generally following an acute incident where consumers typically require higher levels of care.

Following several years of consultation, GPs have advised the Department of Health that the current referral pathways (Website, Fax, Call Centre) are labour intensive requiring manual data entry, leading to inefficiencies and risks of error which, in turn, affects the quality and accuracy of the information stored in My Aged Care.

To address these problems and encourage more early referrals by GPs (in order to help minimise acute incidents), a My Aged Care eReferral SmartForm web service has been introduced by HealthLink to facilitate direct submission of referrals from Best Practice Software users nationwide.

Adopting an integrated referral solution on both sides of the referral fence (GPs and My Aged Care) achieves the following goals:

  • Reduces the administrative burden and cost associated with the current health professional referral pathways, minimising manual entry;
  • Increases the number of referrals to My Aged Care from health profeissionals (particularly GPs);
  • Encourages early intervention to prevent avoidable hospitalisations, in line with the Department of Health’s re-ablement approach;
  • Promotes more holistic assessment and service delivery, which also better reflects care needs;
  • Enables faster assessments and more timely access to care; and
  • Improves the quality and accuracy of data stored in My Aged Care

The My Aged Care e-Referral SmartForm design makes it quick and easy to use because it’s securely integrated by HealthLink into the Bp Premier patient record.  Upon launch, the SmartForm pre-populates all the patient and practice details and enables files to be attached from the patient’s record to back up the referral.  This allows doctors and nurses to fill the forms out during a patient consultation, ask the patient questions while they are there and get the referral right, the first time.

Once the e-Referrals are submitted to My Aged Care, a confirmation number is provided by My Aged Care on the submitted form, and a copy is instantly saved back into the patient’s file in Bp Premier.

Since the e-Referral’s launch in October 2019, My Aged Care reports more than 35,000 e-Referrals have been sent, showing just how popular the solution has become with general practices.

The overall quality of referrals has improved, as the e-Referral ensures My Aged Care receives complete, detailed, legible patient and medical information every time.  And the faster a referral is sent and processed, the less time a patient has to wait to be assessed.

A general practice in Adelaide that uses Bp Premier hasn’t looked back since introducing My Aged Care e-Referrals following an initial trial period.  Nurse manager Casey Franchi, who’s worked at Chandler’s Hill Surgery, now uses e-Referrals on a regular basis.

Prior to e-Referrals, Casey used the My Aged Care website to send referrals.

“The website referral is time-consuming compared to e-Referrals because you have to manually type all the patient details in from their file, which can also lead to transcription errors.”

“With the website, because it was time-consuming, I’d have to fill the referral out after the patient had left because it required a big chunk of my time to do it. And then if I needed to ask them a question, I’d have to contact them.”

“In comparison, the e-Referral is in the patient file so you can easily and securely access any documents to upload to back up the referral.”

“Life is so much easier now and I would recommend them to any general practice. The time saved means I can focus on the important stuff like caring for patients and not on filling out forms.”

My Aged Care director of online services and communication Kylie Sauer says e-Referrals have improved healthcare workers’ experience by offering better integration into their existing workflow and taking away the need to exit their PMS to send a referral.

“Sending a referral by fax or the My Aged Care website takes longer. By pre-populating patient information and GP details, e-Referrals are the fastest and most efficient way to refer patients to My Aged Care,” she says.

“Faxes are particularly slow to process on the My Aged Care end, which results in patients waiting longer to be referred for an assessment.”

Watch this short video to find out how you can easily e-refer patients to My Aged Care using your Best Practice Software.

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Evrima Technologies – Now Part of the Bp Partner Network

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The following article was submitted by Bp Software Evrima Technologies. You can view their partner profile here. 

Evrima Technologies is now part of the Bp Partner Network.

Evrima makes it easier for your GP Clinic to offer Clinical Trials as a care option for your patients.

For some patients, clinical trials may be the best or only option to access treatments that are not readily available.  However, this information can be difficult for them to obtain.

As a Healthcare Professional, you are the most trusted source of information for your patients. Research shows people who haven’t been in a clinical trial before would prefer to hear about trials from their doctor or health professional and about 4 out of 5 patients would consider a clinical trial if it was recommended by their doctor.

The Evrima GP search tool, integrated with Bp Premier is free of charge and offers:

  • Access to clinical trials without administrative burden on the practice.
  • Ability to match and recommend clinical trials for your patients.
  • Enables your patients to gain access to treatments that are otherwise unavailable to them.
  • Increase awareness of new research and trials in Australia.
  • Added service to your practice to increase practice profile.
  • Participation in cutting-edge clinical research within Australia.

To activate Evrima integration with Bp Premier, simply follow this link. Once these simple steps have been completed please contact us via clinicians@evrima.com.au to finalise the simple onboarding process.

About Evrima Technologies

Evrima was founded to address the many challenges facing the clinical trial industry, in particular, patient awareness and participation. Evrima recognises the need to bring HCPs and clinical research together to advance clinical trial awareness, participation and thereby helping to accelerate medical development. Our mission is to improve the quality of care for patients by empowering doctors to discuss clinical trials with their patients, simplifying the clinical trial enrollment process and therefore improving our healthcare system.

Learn more about Evrima today by visiting their website.

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Medicinal Cannabis Prescribing – Simpler and More Accessible Than Ever

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In Australia, all doctors and nurse practitioners can legally prescribe medicinal cannabis to their patients with specific medical conditions through the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) Special Access Scheme. To date, there have been over 220 conditions approved by the TGA. Recently there have been significant improvements to the application process when prescribing medical cannabis to improve patient access and reduce the administrative burden on you as the prescriber.

The below information has been taken from the TGA website:

“If you determine that an ‘unapproved’ medicinal cannabis product is clinically suitable for your patient, there are four pathways through which your patient can access the product with your prescription.”

Authorised Prescriber - 'Established History of Use' Pathway

Medical practitioners can apply to become Authorised Prescribers of specified medicinal cannabis products without the need for approval from a Human Research Ethics Committee or endorsement from a specialist college.

Medicinal cannabis products and indications deemed by the TGA to have established history of use are specified in the list of medicines with an established history of use.

Authorised Prescriber - Standard Pathway

Medical practitioners can apply to become Authorised Prescribers of medicinal cannabis products not included in the list of medicines with an established history of use via the standard pathway. This pathway requires approval from a Human Research Ethics Committee, or endorsement from a specialist college before applying to the TGA.

SAS Category A Notification Pathway

Medicinal cannabis products supplied via the SAS Category A pathway must be imported on a patient-by-patient basis with permission from the Office of Drug Control (ODC). 

SAS Category B Application Pathway

The SAS Category B pathway is an application pathway available to prescribing healthcare practitioners including Medical Practitioners and Nurse Practitioners. When applying to access an unapproved medicinal cannabis product on behalf of a patient under the SAS Category B pathway, prescribers must provide a clinical justification. The justification should include the seriousness of the patient’s condition, consideration for the use of medicines that are included in the ARTG and the potential risks and benefits of using the proposed unapproved medicine.

There are no restrictions on the medical conditions for which a prescriber may apply via the SAS to access an unapproved medicinal cannabis product for their patient, provided the prescriber has the appropriate knowledge on the condition being treated and on the medicinal cannabis product they wish to prescribe.

Reporting

MedReleaf Authorised Prescriber Now Available in the Bp Premier Reporting Tool

The MedReleaf Authorised Prescriber 6-Monthly Report is to support prescribing doctors who are authorised prescribers for unregistered medical cannabis products. Authorised prescribers for unregistered medical cannabis products need to report the number of new patients commenced on treatment, and number of patients continued on treatment (for longer than 6 months), for each product to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. 

This report takes the stress out of keeping track of patient numbers throughout the reporting period. A simple report generation saves the doctor and clinic ample administrative work.

To learn more on the TGA Reporting Tool please visit: MedReleaf 6 monthly TGA reporting

Learning

MedReleaf Prescriber Program

MedReleaf Australia’s prescriber program is available to all doctors, providing access to training and education for the doctor to confidently assess, advise, prescribe and treat patients with medical cannabis. 

Peer-to-peer workshops, educational webinars and further clinical material are available through registering to access MedReleaf’s online training and education portal, available here.

medical cannabis prescribing prescriber program flyer

The following article was submitted by Bp Software Silver Partner MedReleaf. You can view their partner profile here. 

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Prevention is Better Than Cure – My Journey With NCSR Integration

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Contributed by guest author Dana Tse of Campsie Medical Practice in Campsie, NSW.

When it comes to cervical cancer, Australia is fortunate enough to have the lowest mortality rate, and second lowest incidence rate in the world. While these are encouraging statistics, the success of our cervical screening program is heavily dependent upon the recruitment of women.

Higher rates of participation in cervical screening means that more women with precancerous abnormalities can be detected and treated sooner, which is necessary to achieve lower incidence and mortality from cervical cancer.

Cervical Screening Rates In Your Practice

What are the cervical cancer screening rates in your practice? More importantly, how do they compare to other practices in your PHN or the national average?

What, if any, have you found are the limitations in improving screening rates within your practice? Can you articulate the barriers to cervical screening in your practice? Is it perhaps a lack of patient education around the importance of cervical screening? Are there cultural barriers in place?

Is Preventative Healthcare Part of Your Practice's Workflow?

Nationally, cervical cancer rates are declining. Some drivers behind this include the widely available HPV vaccination, the option for cervical cancer screening self-collection, and the initiative to offer cervical screenings every 5 years. However, even with all the above, our national rate of screening is less than 50%; and I tend to be a glass half empty sort of person!

At our practice in Campsie, less than half of our female population were involved in cervical screening. We averaged approximately 30% for our PHN, compared to the national average of around 40%.

So naturally the question came to mind – what were some of the barriers that our women patients were facing? We decided to embark on a quality improvement activity with NPS MedicineWise Learning to ascertain how we could improve these rates.

The most welcomed upgrade and recently added feature in Bp Premier Saffron was the NCSR integration – or National Cancer Screening Register. Instead of having our nurses call and be on hold with the NCSR, we can now readily access information through Bp Premier. In fact, we’re able to do everything related to cervical screening directly within Bp Premier; from the utilities function, to searching the NCSR hub for most recent screening dates, results and even to check when women were next due, or if they were overdue and required a recall.

We could finally update our database to reflect our true cervical screening rates and actively recall women who were due for screening. This was particularly important post-lockdowns, where ‘less important’ things like screening may not have been front of mind. I believe our cervical screenings rates are now higher than before, due to information previously being missing, incomplete or out of date.

Bp Software provides several SQL queries that have proven useful for us in accomplishing this task.

NCSR Integration - Where To From Here?

Quality improvement is something that exists on a timeline. It can’t be set and forget. As for our practice’s approach:

  • We plan to revisit our cervical screening every 6 months to capture any data that is missing
  • We plan to include cancer screening records for all new patients when they meet with our nurses
  • We would like to tackle bowel screening rates
  • We look forward to the NCSR integration with Breast Screen
  • We would like to see NCSR reminders in Bp Premier generated as a list, without having to enter the reminders ourselves

We are fortunate and privileged to live in a country that offers free screening for prevention of these cancers, most of which have great treatments if identified early.

As the adage goes; prevention is better than cure.

Authored by:

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Dana Tse
Practice Manager at Campsie Medical Practice

Dana has previously contributed an article to the Bp Newsroom on Effective Practice Management.

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Concerned about PRODA? – A Message from Services Australia

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The following is a direct statement provided to Best Practice Software from Services Australia.

Services Australia (the agency) is pleased to be working with the Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) to ensure their members, and more broadly the healthcare software industry developers, have the correct information available for you and your customers.

Concerns have been raised about the changes to the way healthcare locations transmit claims and payments with the Medicare (including AIR and DVA), PBS and Aged Care programs. We want to assure you that the considerable effort you have put into developing and transitioning to web services and PRODA is not in vain.

Confusion About Services Offered by Provider Digital Access (PRODA)

PRODA is an online authentication system that verifies an organisation or individuals’ identity. It is used by multiple programs and services to ensure the right person is accessing the right services. Once authentication is verified through PRODA, the user is passed to the services they are already registered for. Users do not have to register more than once for PRODA.

The services that use PRODA to authenticate are not limited to healthcare programs, and include a range of services from Student Services, Child Care and eInvoicing.

eInvoicing is not for Medicare, PBS or Aged Care claims and payments. eInvoicing is a program that allows government departments to speed up the way they invoice and pay for goods and services (moving away from sending invoices). It is used for government contracts and payments between government departments.

Other Concerns Identified

Sharing of information: PRODA is used for authentication services for many programs, Once authenticated, no details of your secure transactions with linked services are shared outside that program.

Web services: Moving Medicare, Aged Care and PBS claims and payments to web services is part of the Health Delivery Modernisation Budget Initiative to remove adaptors and the significant technical debt and the log4j vulnerabilities associated with them. Claims are assessed and processed in the same way, regardless of the technology the transmission is submitted through.

Authenticating of behalf of customer: Software developers are able to continue to offer their customers the ability to authenticate on their behalf or have their customers (i.e the site) authenticate themselves.

Organisation structures: There is no requirement for Medicare, Aged Care and PBS healthcare locations, including shared GP practices, to set up an entirely new business structure for claims and payments.

Medicare claiming using a PRODA account: Healthcare providers can use their patient management system and web services/PRODA organisation account to claim for Medicare.  The PRODA organisation account is linked to the healthcare provider’s Minor ID or multiple Minor IDs.

A provider may choose to submit claims authenticated by their own PRODA account for the practice location they are servicing from. Alternatively, if there are a number of providers servicing from a location, one provider may submit claims on behalf of other providers. This model requires consent from the other servicing providers.

Re-signing up to PRODA: A user is not required to re-sign up to PRODA. A PRODA user only needs to register once and can use this account to link to multiple services. Signing up to PRODA does not request or confirm tax requirements. The organisation set up for submitting claims to Medicare is not for tax purposes.

Important Information for 13 March 2022

Please know that we understand the large amount of pressure the healthcare industry is under. We appreciate your significant efforts in supporting your customers to either transition to web services or to ensure their renewed PKI certificates are installed.

We’ve already let you know that we will not be turning off adaptor technology on 13 March 2022. If your customers are having trouble transmitting claims online from midday on 13 March 2022, it will be because they have not installed their renewed PKI certificate.

The agency is ready to assist you in monitoring your customers’ progress in installing their renewed certificates and to confirm any that may be at risk of not having their certificate installed in time.

In the weeks after 13 March 2022, we will contact developers and healthcare locations that are still transmitting on adaptors and have not requested and been approved for additional time.

For More Information

You can find out more about linking PRODA services here.

For eLearning, simulations and guides about PRODA click here.

You can find out more about eInvoicing here.

If you still can’t find the information you need, please contact us here.

We’ll work with you to provide the right information to your customers.

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Have You Upgraded to Medicare Web Services? The Clock is Ticking!

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Have you upgraded to Medicare Web Services yet?

The 19th of June is only weeks away and if you’re not using Medicare Web Services-compatible software by then, Online Claiming and Eclipse billing will stop working for you. The team here at Bp Software is here to break down the process for you into more manageable, bite-sized pieces. So, bookmark this post, set aside a few minutes each day, and make a start because how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Step 1

If this article comes as a shock to you, and you weren’t aware of this mandatory change, please click here for an overview of Medicare Web Services, and the impact on your practice. 

Step 2

If you do not have one already, click here to register an individual account in PRODA. Services Australia steps and our Knowledge Base can help you navigate the registration process.

Step 3

If you do not have one already, register your organisation by logging into your PRODA account, selecting organisations then registering new organisation. Again, Services Australia steps and our Knowledge Base break it down nicely.

Ask the question first… Is your organisation already registered? Who set up the organisation? Who in the practice will be adding and managing your B2B device? If you haven’t had that conversation yet, now is the time. Perhaps your principal doctor originally set it up, but you, as the practice manager, will be the one managing your B2B device. You won’t be able to do that if you’re not delegated the right authority in PRODA.

Step 4

Link to Medicare Online. You’re going to need to grab some information from your system first before you jump back into PRODA, so if you’re a Bp Premier user click here, or a Bp VIP.net user, click here.

Step 5

Add or manage other members of your organisation in PRODA. If you’re the person who’ll perform functions on behalf of your organisation, you need to ensure you’re added by your PRODA RA number. Click here for more information.

Step 6

This one is exclusive to multi-location practices. Make sure you register your practice locations as subsidiary organisations in PRODA by following these steps.

Step 7

Register your B2B device. For Bp Premier users, you’ll need Saffron SP2 or later. Click here for the steps. For Bp VIP.net users, you’ll need Topaz SP1, which is on its way.  

upgraded to medicare web services quote

What's Next?

After your PRODA set up is done, you’ll need to upgrade your software. If you’re a Bp Premier user, you can do this now by upgrading to the most recently released version of Bp Premier. It’s really simple to upgrade, you just need to ensure you’re running at least Indigo SP1 and have the February 2022 data update installed. To see just how straight forward it is, check out this short demonstration:

How To Upgrade Your Version of Bp Premier on Vimeo.

If you’re a Bp VIP.net user, your Medicare Web Services compatible version is currently being worked on and will be available to you soon. In the interim, in order to be adequately prepared to upgrade when it’s ready, we strongly recommend you complete the PRODA preparation steps.

If you get stuck at any point with PRODA, Services Australia can give you a hand and for anything system related, our support teams are standing by to assist. If you don’t prepare and upgrade by June 19th, Online Claiming and Eclipse billing will stop working for you, and you’ll need to manually process your claims.

Please don’t delay and remember, how do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time.

Authored by:

Suzi Eley Author Avatar

Suzi Eley
Training & Deployment Leader at Best Practice Software

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Identifying and Responding to Substance Abuse Disorders: The ASSIST

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The ASSIST is a World Health Organisation endorsed screening and brief intervention framework, designed to help clinicians identify and respond to substance use disorders. ASSIST screens for all drugs, legal and illegal, and stratifies risk for each substance into low, moderate and high levels.

ASSIST Screen 1

ASSIST has several advantages over other screening tools. First, ASSIST covers all drugs, including legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco, and illegal drugs like cannabis, methamphetamine or opioids (and more). Importantly, ASSIST is also able to identify use of non-medical use of prescription drugs. The benefit therefore, over other screening tools, is that ASSIST can also capture polydrug use which is an increasingly common occurrence in primary health settings.

How Does ASSIST Connect to Primary Health?

By providing primary healthcare clinicians with the tools to manage low to moderate risk substance use disorders in-clinic, the ASSIST also has the capacity to reduce the burden of unnecessary referrals to specialist alcohol and other drug (AOD) services. The ASSIST triages risk for the patient into low, moderate or high risk for each substance, and connects that stratification to an appropriate intervention. For low and moderate risk clients, a purpose-built brief intervention is appropriate. 

Therefore, these patients can and should be managed by the primary health clinician rather than being referred to specialist services.

For high-risk cases however, an ASSIST score can also be used as the basis of a referral to specialist AOD service for further assessment or treatment. Only those at high-risk are candidates (those who score 27+ on a given drug) to be referred to specialist AOD services for assessment and treatment if required.  

We have therefore actively encouraged the primary healthcare sector to use the ASSIST to identify those who are at high risk of dependence, and respond by sending only those individuals for further specialist AOD assessment.  

Currently, some specialist AOD services require an ASSIST assessment as part of the referral process. Having an awareness of the ASSIST and how it connects primary and specialist AOD services will be an important feature of the prevention of substance use disorders moving forward.

A new ASSIST word processing template is now available for use within Bp Premier.

The ASSIST program was developed by Associate Professor Robert Ali (MBBS, FAChAM, FAFPHM) and Dr Matthew Stevens (PhD) from the University of Adelaide. 

The full summary of the ASSIST program is available to read here.

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