Medicare to clamp down on telehealth claims by nurse practitioners
Doctors and the MBS Review said nurse practitioners should not be exempt from the 'existing relationship' rules.
The Federal Government is finally planning to enforce Medicare’s ‘existing relationship’ telehealth rule for nurse practitioners, but not until November.
The rule means that a doctor, or a colleague at the same practice, must have seen a patient face to face within the past 12 months to bill Medicare’s telehealth items.
Medical groups have complained that nurse practitioners do not operate under the same rules, an anachronism also highlighted in the MBS Continuous Review’s 2024 report on telehealth.
This week, the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners messaged members that the Federal Government was closing the loophole on 1 November.
