‘ Urgent’ items ban looms
Males at risk from blood
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No security changes after data stolen
Patients may be asked to present photo ID to claim rebates.
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ANTONY SCHOLEFIELD GP clinics have avoided being embroiled in more red tape in the aftermath of the furore over the sale of Medicare numbers on the dark web.
Media reports in July said a cybercriminal was accessing Medicare numbers illegally to sell online for less than $ 30 each, prompting a hastily assembled Federal Government review.
Among the options that have been canvassed are patients being
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made to present photo IDs at GP clinics before being eligible to claim Medicare rebates.
The review, released last week, recommends some tweaks but no wholesale changes to how numbers are accessed. It recommends:
• Practices should take“ reasonable steps” to confirm a patient’ s identity, but what reasonable means is deliberately left to practices to decide. Any measures should account for people who may not have identity documents, such as patients who are homeless or fleeing domestic violence.
• Practices should formally ask for consent before looking up a patient’ s number. Consent can be verbal or tacked onto existing forms for new patients.
• GPs who delegate their Health Professional Online Services( HPOS) login to administrative staff will have to renew the approval every 12 months so it is not left unchecked if staff members leave and no longer need it.
• HPOS accounts should be deactivated if nobody uses them for six months. However, practitioners should receive a notice after three months, and the reactivation process should be simple. HPOS is used daily by 45,000 health professionals for legitimate reasons but is suspected of being the most likely way to illegally source the Medicare numbers for sale.
‘ Urgent’ items ban looms
from page 1
The National Association of Medical Deputising Services said after-hours services would be decimated if the changes go ahead.
The plan would have a major impact on GPs and registrars currently working for deputising services.
The taskforce report showed that some 27 % of urgent after-hours claims were made by VR GPs and 7 % by GP registrars.
The RACGP welcomed the report, saying the urgent items had been misused to support low-value care.
“ After-hours home visits should only be provided by specialist GPs or doctors actively working towards specialist recognition as a GP.
“ The findings have certainly brought us a step closer to achieving this,” college president Dr Bastian Seidel said.
Males at risk from blood
from page 1
In an accompanying commentary, Dr Ritchard Cable, director of transfusion medicine at the University of Connecticut, said it was possible that blood transfusions might cause long-term immunological complications in the same way as organ transplants.
A female-to-male mortality risk had already been seen for stem-cell transplantation, he noted, possibly mediated by Y chromosomes and accentuated by male sex hormones.
However, he stressed that further research was needed before making any changes to blood transfusion policies.
“ If confirmatory studies in other cohorts demonstrate that a donor’ s sex and pregnancy status are associated with post-transfusion mortality, blood centres and transfusion services will need to mitigate this risk,” he said. Journal of the American Medical Association 2017; online.
6 | Australian Doctor | 27 October 2017 www. australiandoctor. com. au