Cubiko and Bp join to boost MyMedicare registrations

The two platforms are helping GPs find eligible patients.

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Practice management software vendor Best Practice and intelligence platform Cubiko have joined forces to help general practices generate lists of MyMedicare eligible patients. 

The partnership will also help streamline bulk uploads of registered patient lists from Health Professional Online Services through a CSV import function. 

MyMedicare lists of registered patients are available directly through HPOS, allowing practices to view current and pending patient registrations. It also allows users to amend, withdraw or delete patient registrations. 

Cubiko released a CSV importer that works with BP Premier last November that allows practices to view registered patient data in Cubiko from the CVS upload from HPOS. 

New functionality is now available in Cubiko for automated write-back for the latest version of BP Premier – Orchid Service Pack 1 revision 1. 

In a recent webinar Cubiko COO Robert Dickson said Cubiko was able to map patients in the list to the patient in Best Practice. 

Mr Dickson said the only identifier for each patient in HPOS was their Medicare number or their DVA number, but Cubiko would run a small query using the patient’s Medicare number to then find the Bp internal ID. 

That way Cubiko was not storing the Medicare or DVA number anywhere in its software, he said. 

This is a second validation step to ensure the patient has registered with the practice and exists in Best Practice. 

The data is validated before and after it is uploaded into Cubiko, and checked with Best Practice. The next step was to confirm it before writing back to Bp. 

“This will provide a complete list of all the patients who are going to write back to BP,” said Mr Dickson. “Every patient file is then updated across the Best Practice instance with the correct information.” 

This means that information such as date of registration is added to Bp but if a patient has withdrawn from MyMedicare, they will be unticked in Bp to say they are no longer registered. 

Best Practice training and deployment specialist Sophie Saul said Bp had recently added a new MyMedicare site ID field to the latest Orchid SP1 rev 1, which aims to ensure the right site is used for multi-site practices when linking the locations to billing. 

Organisation site IDs are available in HPOS and are used in conjunction with the patient’s registered location to ensure that the correct Medicare incentives are applied when billing. 

Several different new incentives are being rolled out for MyMedicare, including a new GP in aged care incentive and one for frequent hospital users. 

Ms Saul said Best Practice had also added new functionality in its Bp Comms package that will allow users to communicate MyMedicare registration awareness to patients. 

Cubiko can be used to generate lists of active patients who may be eligible for MyMedicare, such as those who have used telehealth services recently, those in residential aged care, or those for whom a chronic disease management plan has been created. 

Both Bp and Cubiko have developed a range of tools to allow practices to communicate with different cohorts in the most suitable way, including by letter or by bulk SMS.