Introduction
On 29 March 2020, the Minister for Health announced that telehealth services would be expanded to all Australians in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Whole of population’ telehealth services were introduced on 30 March 2020.
While the COVID-19 items were initially available only to patients and providers with or at risk of the virus, this requirement has now been lifted and the services are available to all Medicare-eligible persons for the treatment of any condition, and can be provided by any practitioner qualified to provide the service in line with normal MBS arrangements. A service may only be provided by telehealth where it is safe and clinically appropriate to do so. Providers do not need to physically be in their regular practice to provide telehealth services.
For more information regarding the new items visit MBS Online. A series of fact sheets has also been developed to support the introduction of these items.
Enquiries relating to the telehealth MBS items can be sent to askMBS@health.gov.au.
Bulk billing
You can apply your ordinary billing practices to all of the telehealth items and all patients.
Alongside this, bulk billing incentive payments (items 10990, 10991, 74990 and 74991) return to their normal pre-COVID-19 levels and the introduced incentives for vulnerable patients (items 10981 and 10982) are discontinued.
Item descriptors and rebates
Rebates for telehealth services are the same as those paid for the equivalent face-to-face services. These services are for non-admitted patients only.
A number of changes to MBS telehealth items for general practice services took effect on 1 July 2021. Please visit this page for more information.
For the most up-to-date list of telehealth item numbers and rebates, refer to the RACGP’s MBS Telehealth guide.