MyMedicare: the new voluntary patient registration model is well underway. It’s voluntary and free to register your practice and patients. It is open to Australians with a Medicare card or Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) Veteran Card.
To understand the benefits and start registering your practice and your patients visit: https://sydneynorthhealthnetwork.org.au/programs/mymedicare/
The Primary Care Team are here to provide assistance – email pcait@snhn.org.au or phone 9432 8250.
Key points/updates:
- Public awareness campaign in February
Ensure your whole practice team is aware of the MyMedicare Program and are ready to answer patient enquiries. Recently published MyMedicare patient resources are available on the MyMedicare website and include translated patient information in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Greek, Italian, Korean and Vietnamese, and patient animation videos. Tailored First Nations people communications are currently in development.
- Accreditation and MyMedicare
To access MyMedicare and other Australian Government incentive programs such as Practice Incentives and Workforce Incentives, General Practices must be accredited through the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme.
Non-accredited practices registered to My Medicare eligible to be accredited against the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme have 12 months to gain accreditation from the date they register. Further information on MyMedicare eligibility can be found here.
Practices are encouraged to engage with the requirements of the National General Practice Accreditation Scheme early, by initiating practice accreditation in contacting an accreditation agency:
- Australian Council on Healthcare Standards
- AGPAL Group of Companies
- Global-Mark Pty Ltd
- Quality Practice Accreditation Pty Ltd
- Software Integration
The Department of Health and Aged Care is working with Services Australia and the software industry on integration of MyMedicare in Practice Management Software (PMS): to make it easier for practices and providers to manage patient registrations, receive notifications, and use the reporting capabilities in MyMedicare to support their patients.
The department is aware of the increasing practice calls for this integration in PMS and is working towards the availability of initial functionality from June 2024.
Some software vendors may have created a workaround MyMedicare registration form to integrate with their PMS. Modification of the downloadable patient registration form is discouraged as this may directly impact patient consent, patient information security and linkages to the department’s privacy and data management policies. There are likely to be future modifications to the registration form which may impact the data fields required to complete a patient’s MyMedicare registration.
- Patient Initiated Registration
When practices register for MyMedicare they have an option to set a preference on how registrations initiated by patients through the Medicare Online App (MOA) are accepted. Some practices have elected to manually accept each registration, this means when a patient completes a registration in MOA it is sent to the MyMedicare system at the practice as a pending registration (not complete). The practice needs to then go in and accept or decline each registration.
Services Australia advises there are a significant number of pending registrations which have not been accepted by practices. If a pending registration is dormant awaiting acceptance from the practice for more than 30 days, it will expire, and the patient will need to re-register in MyMedicare.
Please review and accept or decline patient registrations within 30 days, if the preference settings are manual accept/decline. More information on preference settings in MyMedicare can be found on page 27 of the MYMEDM02-Managing patient registrations (servicesaustralia.gov.au) module.
- MyMedicare Patient Registration Form
A minor change has been made to the patient registration form to clarify eligibility for Residential Aged Care Home (RACH) residents. Under eligibility criteria the form now reads “you’ve had 2 or more face-to-face appointments with your regular general practice or health service in the past two years”.
RACH residents are eligible for MyMedicare if they have a Medicare or DVA card and received two in person appointments with their regular practice in the preceding 24 months, or one appointment in rural and remote areas. These in person appointments can be provided at the practice’s clinic, the patient’s home, or at a residential aged care home.
The updated patient registration form can be found here: MyMedicare Registration Form | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
- MyMedicare Patient Registration Form Process
Services Australia advises that they are receiving small numbers of hardcopies of MyMedicare patient registration forms via email, mail and at offices. Services Australia is unable to process hardcopy registration forms and are unable to register patients in the system if they receive hardcopy forms.
To complete the patient registration in the MyMedicare system, practices are required to enter the patient information collected on the form into Health Professional Online Services (HPOS). The practice must keep a copy of the signed form with the patient’s clinical records.
If a practice has questions regarding the registration process, they can access education materials via the Services Australia Health Professional Education website. Practices can also contact Services Australia on 132 150 (select option 2) and a Medicare Engagement Officer (MEO) will assist them.
- MyMedicare Terms and Conditions
The MyMedicare Terms and Conditions are now available via the MyMedicare website and have been integrated into the Medicare Online App (MOA). Terms and Conditions can be found here: MyMedicare Terms and Conditions | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care