Surgical Assistant Billing Guide
Billing DVA and Worker's Compensation Patients
When you treat a patient whose medical procedure is covered by the Department of Veterans' Affairs (DVA), you must bill DVA directly and charge them according to their Schedule of Fees. If your practice is already set up to bill the DVA, then you can use EasyAssist to calculate the correct DVA fee and assistant item number and raise your accounts with the DVA as normal. If you aren't already set up for DVA billing, you can simply send a 'Claim For Treatment Services Voucher' (form D1217, available from DVA stationary supplies or downloadable from the DVA website) along with your invoice(s) to Medicare Australia in your capital city.
Similarly, when a patient's operation is covered by Workers' Compensation, you must send the account to the Workers' Compensation insurance company. Each state has its own Workers' Compensation insurer, which go by such names as WorkCover and WorkSafe. Some state insurers publish a Schedule of Fees which dictate the maximum a medical practitioner can charge for a particular item number. These Schedules are built into EasyAssist. Other state insurers do not publish a Schedule of Fees and instead agree to pay the doctor the usual fee they would charge for the service. EasyAssist will identify the Workers' Compensation funds that operate this way.
The state Workers' Compensation insurers cover workers whose employers choose to take out an insurance policy to cover their employees. Other employers (especially very large corporations such as BHP and Woolworths) sometimes provide their own Workers' Compensation scheme. In these cases, the company may choose to use the Schedule of Fees of the major Workers' Compensation organisation in that state, or they may not have any predetermined fees schedule - you will need to check with each self-insurer as to their policy. If they have no Schedule of Fees, you can set your own fee for the service you provided.