Surgical Assistant Billing Guide
3. Invoice Requirements
You will need to raise invoices with patients, Medicare and health insurers to receive payment for surgical assisting services. Your invoice should contain the following information for each operation:
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Surgical assistant's details:
- Name
- Contact details
- Provider number (location-specific for where the operation took place)
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Patient's details:
- Name
- Address
- Medicare number, reference number and expiry date
- Private Health Insurance Fund and member number (if patient is insured)
- Service Details
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- Surgeon and surgeon's provider number
- Name of the hospital and hospital provider number
- Date of service
- Item number(s) for the procedure. These must match the item number(s) used by the surgeon.
- Item number claimed by the surgical assistant for the procedure. This will be a number between 51300 and 51318 inclusive (certain opthalmologic procedures may attract two assistant item numbers).
- Description of each of the item numbers listed. This doesn't have to be the full Medical Benefits Schedule description, but it should be enough to identify the procedure.
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Payment Details
- Fee charged by the surgical assistant
- Payment methods accepted, e.g. cheque, money order, electronic funds transfer, credit card, cash
- Payment method information, e.g. for cheques you supply a mailing address and 'Account Payable To' name, EFT requires a bank account BSB and account number.
- Payment due date
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Other Details
- You do not need to list a referring doctor to claim a fee as the surgical assistant. Do not list the primary surgeon as the referring doctor.
- It is a good idea to include a unique invoice or account number for reference purposes. Many remittance information statements from health funds will use this number as a reference.
Invoice Example
We have created an example of an invoice for a surgical assistant. Your invoice does not have to look anything like the example, but it should contain all the same information.
Click here to view the sample invoice
Free Invoice Generator
EasyAssist comes bundled with a free Invoice Generator. The Invoice Generator installs automatically with EasyAssist and you can access it from the Start Menu under EasyAssist. The sample invoice above was created with the Invoice Generator. You can use it free-of-charge even if you don't purchase an EasyAssist Licence.