GPs cry foul over Medicare’s ‘misleading’ telehealth rule
Doctors targeted in the latest health department crackdown say they are victims of bureaucratic semantics
GPs targeted in a Federal Department of Health telehealth compliance blitz say they are victims of misleading Medicare rules.
On Thursday, the department said 400 doctors had been sent letters demanding they justify their claims amid concerns that they were billing for consults with patients who had not been in their practice in the previous 12 months.
Among them was Dr Henry Monkus who is being asked to review 192 telehealth claims.
He said it was never clear to him or other doctors that the 12-month rule applied not only to a patient’s initial telehealth consult, but to all subsequent telehealth consults.
