BUPA Australia is in the process of merging its brands into a single company. These include HBA, Mutual Community, MBF and MBF Alliances (NRMA, SGIC, SGIO). Most doctors will have received a letter recently advising of changes to the way that accounts for these funds will be managed. The following is a summary of the changes that affect Access Anaesthetics clients.
| • | The doctor’s Practice ID should appear on all accounts. |
| • | The doctor’s Practice ID should appear on all batch headers. |
| • | (The doctor’s Practice ID should be transmitted in all Eclipse claims in the Fund Payee ID field. This was implemented earlier this year in Access Anaesthetics.) |
| • | No gaps fee schedules have changed with fees for VIC and SA being the HBA fees for VIC and SA respectively. In all other states, the fee schedule for MBF for that state should be used for all BUPA funds. |
| • | A copayment can no longer be charged for MBF Alliances members. |
| • | Mailing addresses for paper claims have changed. HBA and Mutual Community accounts go to GPO Box 14639 Melbourne VIC 8001, while MBF and MBF Alliances go to GPO Box 9809 Brisbane QLD 4001. |
| • | The changes will take effect from 1 July 2010. |
Other issues which do not affect Access Anaesthetics software are…
| • | Claim overpayments will have to be repaid back to BUPA via EFT or cheque, not by the previous method of having the overpayments deducted from future claims. |
| • | Payments will be paid by EFT each Wednesday. |
| • | Payment reports will cover all BUPA funds – HBA, MBF, NRMA, SGIC, SGIO. |
| • | Indexation of all funds will occur in November each year, instead of February (MBF) or April (HBA). |
| • | Current patient membership numbers remain valid, while new 8 digit numbers will be rolled out progressively. |
To address these issues, the following changes have been made to Access Anaesthetics.
The Bupa Practice ID is stored in the lookup table that records the doctor's provider numbers. This allows storing a different ID for each different provider number that a doctor uses.
To edit the ID, open the Options form, Provider details page.
Click the editing button to the right of the blue Bupa Practice ID field. |
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The list of provider numbers will be displayed.
The Bupa Practice ID can be entered for the selected provider number at the bottom of the screen.
For group practices, this should be done for each doctor. |
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There is no longer a separate lookup table for Practice ID and Fund Payee IDs. Since Bupa is the only fund that currently uses these IDs, Access Anaesthetics has been programmed to use the Bupa ID whenever it is required.
A function has been added to the addresses editing screen to automatically change the fee schedule of merged funds (HBA, MBF, MBF Alliances) to the correct 1 July 2010 schedule for each state. This will also update the mailing address to the recommended address (HBA/MutComm - GPO 14639 Melbourne VIC 8001, MBF & MBF Alliances - GPO 9809 Brisbane QLD 4001).