• Home
• Indigenous Chronic
  Disease Package
• Tackling Chronic Disease
  Risk Factors
  • National action to reduce Indigenous smoking rate
  • Helping Indigenous Australians to reduce their risk of chronic disease
  • Local Indigenous community campaigns to promote better health
• Improving Chronic Disease
  Management and Follow up
  • Subsidising PBS medicine co-payments
  • Higher utilisation costs for MBS and PBS
  • Supporting primary care providers to coordinate chronic disease management
  • Improving Indigenous participation in health care through chronic disease self management
  • Increasing specialist and allied health follow up care
  • Monitoring and evaluation
• Workforce Expansion,
  Training and Support
  • Workforce education and training
  • Expanding the outreach and service capacity of Indigenous health services
  • Engaging Medicare Locals to improve Indigenous Access to mainstream primary care
  • Attracting more people to work in Indigenous Health
  • Clinical practice and decision support

7. Allied health follow-up services (MBS items 81300-81360)¹

• General Overview

1. Information for General Practitioners on the Indigenous Chronic Disease Package
2. Patient identification
3. Practice Incentives Program (PIP) Indigenous Health Incentive
4. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health assessment items
5. MBS items overview
6. Chronic disease follow-up services
7. Allied health follow-up services
8. Practice nurses/Registered Aboriginal Health Worker follow-up services
9. Pharmaceuticals Benefit Scheme (PBS) Co-payment measure
10. Care Coordination and Supplementary Services Program (CCSS)

Who is this document for?

• General practices
• Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and other Indigenous Health Services

These items are NOT specifically for Aboriginal and/ or Torres Strait Islander people but any person with a chronic condition.

* Current as at 1 Nov 2010.

Patient eligibility

A person who is of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent may be referred by their GP for allied health services under items 81300 to 81360 when the GP has undertaken a health assessment and identified a need for follow-up allied health services.

Items 81300 to 81360 are available in addition to items 10950 to 10970, and they provide an alternative referral pathway for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people to access allied health services.

Eligible practitioners

Items 81300 to 81360 can only be claimed for services provided by eligible allied health professionals who are registered with Medicare Australia. Allied health professionals who are already registered with Medicare do not need to register again to claim these items.

There are specific eligibility requirements for allied health professionals providing services under these items and full item descriptions should be reviewed before undertaking these services.

Items 81300 to 81360:

Allied health services These items are available to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people who have had a health check (except 81305 which does not require a health assessment).

Services provided by eligible allied health professionals under these items must meet the specific requirements set out in the item descriptors. These requirements include:

• Service is of at least 20 minutes duration;
• Service is provided to the person individually (i.e. not as part of a group service) and in person (i.e. the allied health professional must personally attend the patient);
• Person is not an admitted patient of a hospital;
• Allied health professional must provide a written report to the GP; and • If the patient has private health insurance, he/she cannot use their private health insurance ancillary cover to ‘top up’ the Medicare rebate paid for these services.

Restrictions

Items 81300 to 81360 do not apply for services that are provided by any Australian Government or state or territory government funded services or provided to an admitted patient of a hospital. However, where an exemption under subsection 19(2) of the Health Insurance Act 1973 has been granted to an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service or state/territory health clinic, items 81300 to 81360 can be claimed for services provided by eligible allied health professionals salaried by, or contracted to, the service or health clinic. All requirements of the relevant item must be met, including registration of the allied health professional with Medicare Australia. Medicare services provided under a subsection 19(2) exemption must be bulk billed.

1. Department of Health and Ageing. MBS Online. Canberra: DOHA; 2010. Available at: www.health.gov.au/mbsonline

Page currency, Latest update: 09 December, 2010

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