An Update on Medicare Web services – for our Australian Customers
As you may be aware, Services Australia is upgrading the current technology used by practice management software, to connect to critical digital health services such as Medicare/DVA Claiming, Eclipse and the Australian Immunisation Register.
A number of our products currently connect to Services Australia via a Medicare Client Adaptor, which utilises a Medicare PKI certificate also known as a site certificate. As per the new requirements, practice management software vendors will be replacing this Medicare PKI certificate method with a Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account, which will lead to the replacement of the current Medicare Client Adaptor technology.
What does this mean for your Practice?
Practices may have already started receiving information about this change from Services Australia stating that from the 13th of March 2022, the current methods for accessing Medicare/DVA Claiming, Eclipse and the Australian Immunisation Register will no longer be available. To ensure your Practice is not impacted by this change it is extremely important you upgrade to a version of your software that supports Medicare Web services. We expect these updates to be available for our Bp Premier and Bp VIP.net Practices in calendar year Q4 2021 in order to provide our customers with enough time to complete the upgrade prior to the March 2022 deadline.
From a software workflow perspective, we expect minimal change and the transition to using Medicare Web services for Practice staff will be seamless. However, there will be some configuration needed for some products, as part of the upgrade process, to ensure that you have linked your PRODA account as per the new requirements.
Our Training team is busily preparing education sessions, resources and Knowledge Base updates to assist our Practices in preparing and implementing these important changes!
As our Bp Allied product currently uses a third-party solution to deliver Services Australia functionality, these changes will occur in the background. From a software workflow perspective we expect minimal change, and the transition to using Medicare Web services for Practice staff should be seamless. However, there may be some configuration changes in Bp Allied as part of the upgrade process. There is no need for Bp Allied practices to complete any preparation activities at this stage.
What can you do now to prepare? (For Bp Premier and Bp VIP.net Practices only)
If your Practice does not currently have a PRODA account, we suggest creating one ahead of time to ensure you are familiar with its interface and the appropriate authorisation levels are set up for your organisation. This will become important when linking your practice management software (Bp Premier, Bp VIP.net) to your organisation’s PRODA account. If you already have a PRODA account, you can jump right into linking Medicare Online as a service provider to your organisation. Easy to follow steps are provided on the Services Australia website under “Learn how to add and link Medicare Online (including ECLIPSE, DVA and AIR) to your organisation in PRODA.”
We also highly recommend signing up to our training events, downloading our resources and thoroughly reviewing our Knowledge Base once notified that these are available. We expect to have more information regarding these resources at the end of May.
Any questions? Our team can also be contacted via email at MedicareWebservices@bpsoftware.net.
What is Best Practice Software doing?
We are currently enhancing our Bp Premier and Bp VIP.net products to support the transition to PRODA and Medicare Web services. This functionality will be made available via our Program Updates from Q4 2021, providing our Practices with plenty of time to upgrade their software and become familiar with web services before the software vendors cut-off date in March 2022.
As mentioned above, our Bp Allied product product currently uses a third-party solution to deliver Services Australia functionality and these changes will occur in the background. From a software workflow perspective, we expect minimal change and the transition to using Medicare Web services for Practice staff will be seamless. However, there may be some configuration changes in Bp Allied as part of the upgrade process.
Are you interested in becoming an early adopter of Medicare Web services or do you have further questions?
Contact our team on MedicareWebservices@bpsoftware.net. We will register your interest and provide further information as we progress our development.
Authored by:
Jessica White
Manager of Commercial & Customer Enablement at Best Practice Software
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