Helix Updates

An updated March, 2024 Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA) file is now available to download below.

From 1 March 2024 there will be several changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and DVA. These changes include minor administrative and policy changes, as well as the Government’s response to recommendations from the independent MBS Review Taskforce (the Taskforce) and the Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) Executive.

There is a 30 second video guide available here on how to update the Medicare Benefit Schedule in Helix.

It is important to set the “Effective date” to 1 March 2024 so that the item codes along with their current pricing loads during issuing or saving the invoice.

The effective date cannot be back dated.  Either the current date or a future date can be selected.

Read the full details on the MBS website.

If your practice has disabled MedicalDirector Automatic Updates, please follow the instructions below.

Download MBS Update

Please Note: Medical software vendor files (XML and XLSX) have been delayed.  These files will be published as soon as possible. Any claims made from 1 November 2023 onwards will be back dated to reflect the new fees (indexed at 0.5%). Read more here.

For information on how to add these fees to your fee schedule please navigate to the Adding fees manually section and read this article.

Step 1: Initial Setup

The Practice

Prior to sending an Electronic Prescription, your site must be registered with eRx Script Exchange to send eScripts. Please check if the practitioners have entity ID in user settings and have an active account. If the entity ID is missing in the user settings, please contact MedicalDirector Customer Support to assist with the setup.

Each practice must have an HPI-O (Healthcare Provider Identifier – Organisation) number, which must be added to the Centre Settings (accessible via the System Administrator login).

Practitioner

Each registered practitioner must have an HPI-I (Healthcare Provider Identifier – Individual) number, which must be updated and saved in the User Settings in Helix.

Ensure all practitioners wishing to participate have Electronic Prescribing enabled in their Preferences settings.

Step 2: Prescribing Electronically

The prescribing workflow in MedicalDirector Helix has been amended to enable ePrescribing. To view the new workflow, read the step-by-step guide.

Read the instructions

17 April, 2024

Automatic loading of Modified Monash Model (MMM) incentives

The Modified Monash Model (MMM) is a categorisation of geographic locations within Australia, depending on remoteness and population size.

There are seven Modified Monash (MM) categories, MM 1 to MM 7.  MM 1 is a major city and MM 7 is very remote.

Helix now automatically applies incentive payments specific to each MM category.  Practices can set their MM category and bulk billing incentives will automatically load for applicable item codes when invoicing eligible patients.

More information on MMM incentives:

• Bulk billing incentive eligibility
• Background on the Modified Monash Model
• Applicable Item Codes and BBI codes
• Look up your Monash category

How to setup Modified Monash Category incentives

1. To set your Modified Monash Category go to Settings > Centre > Billing and select your category from the drop down box (MM1 – MM7 depending on your location). 

2. Make sure you have uploaded the updated 1 March 2024 Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS) fee file. This 30 second video guide and Knowledge Centre article demonstrates how to upload the MBS fee file in Helix.  This will update the pricing for item codes automatically and load the correct incentives.

MyMedicare patient registration status

MyMedicare is a voluntary patient registration model where patients can register a practice as their primary care provider.

Practices can access triple bulk billing incentives for registered patients for longer MBS telehealth consultations (Levels C, D and E), for children under 16, pensioners and concession card holders.

Practices can now mark a patient’s MyMedicare registration status in Helix using the check box.  More information is available here.

Relevant incentives will automatically populate for applicable telehealth item codes: 91801, 91802, 91920 (Telehealth – Video) and 91900, 91910 (Telehealth – Phone).

Users should note the following:

• A patient’s MyMedicare enrolment status can only be verified after transmitting the claim to Medicare and receiving a response.
• If the MyMedicare registration check box has been ticked and the patient is not in fact enrolled for MyMedicare with the practice, the incentive(s) will not be paid by Medicare (rejected claim).

Services Australia have advised that they will provide relevant APIs later this year, which will enable Helix to check a patient’s MyMedicare enrolment status instantly.

16 April, 2024

New resource 🌐

Helix Knowledge Centre is now live:  The Helix Online Help link has been replaced with a link to the new Helix Knowledge Centre.  In addition to a new look and feel, the improved search and topic categorisation allows users to efficiently find the information they are looking for. 

Discover the new Helix Knowledge Centre here.

New feature 🎁

Colour coding and labelling of times in the Appointment book:  Users can now create and set colours, labels and the time range of available time slots in Helix’s Appointment book.

This can be used to indicate which type of appointments are preferred for bookings during specific times.

These are configurable at a per-practitioner level.  Please note there is no global settings for this feature.

Enhancements ✨

User Permission Realignment – Clinical Settings category: As part of the ongoing revision of user permissions, the list of permissions within the Clinical Settings category has been consolidated and renamed for clarity.

Where two or more permissions have been merged, any roles with the source permissions will still have the merged permission.

Bug fixes🐛

Pathology results failing to import for providers with missing provider number: A bug causing some MQLink results to fail has been resolved. The issue occurred when an incoming result was intended for a provider who did not have a provider number recorded for their first linked centre on their account.

Unable to create a custom user role: A bug preventing users from being able to create new user roles has been resolved.

4 April, 2024

Operational Update 🛠️

Additions to 1 March 2024 MBS fee file: An updated MBS fee file is now available to download here for uploading into Helix. 

There is a 30 second video guide and a Knowledge Centre article on how to upload the Medicare Benefit Schedule in Helix. 

Remember to set the ‘Effective date’ in order for item codes and current pricing to load while issuing or saving an invoice.

The effective date cannot be back dated.  Only the current date or a future date can be selected.

New feature 🎁

‘Other email’ field: A new email field has been added to allow you to capture other email addresses beyond the patient’s primary email address.  

Enhancements ✨

Permanent display of ‘Next of Kin’ field:  The ‘Next of Kin’ field has been given increased prominence by permanently displaying it in the patient file.   This is to ensure the information is gets captured and aligns to RACGP guidelines.

Validation of ‘Vaccine Type’ field:  We have made a minor update to ‘Vaccine type’ field to ensure this information is captured on the JEV vaccines.

Appointment Book view permission: Permission to view the appointment book is now controlled by the permission ‘View Appointments’.

• This enables users to have a read-only view of the Appointment Book, even if no other appointment permissions are granted to their role.

Confidential consult note access moved to permissions: This has been moved to a new ‘Administer Confidential Consult Notes for All Users’ permission in the ‘Clinical Settings’ category.

• Previously, only users in the ‘System Administrator’ role could view confidential consult notes authored by all users.
• The permission allows a user to view confidential consult notes from all users, so ensure it is only delegated to a role if, and when, it should require this elevated access.
• Alternatively, this permission can be used in clinical settings where one team of providers need access to each other’s confidential notes, and others do not. For example, confidential notes could be set to be viewable by all doctors only.
• By default, this permission is enabled for the ‘System Administrator’ role, but this can be disabled through the ‘Roles and Permissions’ settings.
• Any changes to a role’s permissions are viewable in the audit logs.

Urgent recalls notification badge moved to user preference: To improve flexibility and allow creation of custom roles, this functionality has been moved to a preference setting for HCPs (healthcare professionals).

• Previously, the urgent recall notification badge showed a count based on the role of the logged-in user.
• Under Settings > Preferences, HCP users can change the notification badge to count either their own urgent, incomplete recalls, or unactioned, urgent recalls across the current logged-in centre (Non-HCPs will see this view).

User Permission Realignment – Message Centre category: The list of permissions in the Message Centre category has been consolidated and renamed for clarity.

Where two or more permissions have been merged, any roles with the source permissions will still have the merged permission. For more information see Helix Permissions in the Knowledge Centre.

User Permission Realignment – Billing category: The list of permissions in the Billing category has been consolidated and renamed for clarity.

Where two or more permissions have been merged, any roles with the source permissions will still have the merged permission. For more information see Helix Permissions in the Knowledge Centre.

New templates 📃

• Access Mental Health Referral Form – Tasmanian Health Service
• Workers Compensation Certificate of Capacity Medical Certificate – Tasmania
• Eufflexa CT Guided Spinal Injection Radiologist Referral – Perth Radiological Clinic
• PBS Crohn’s disease funding application – Services Australia
• Silver Chain Home Hospital Referral – WA
• Mental Health Triage Referral Form- Sydney North Primary Health Network
• Castlereagh Imaging Request/Referral

20 March, 2024

Enhancements ✨

Technical uplift to ‘Helix Shell 1.2’: Over the past year we’ve been under the hood giving Helix a major technical uplift, which includes moving towards modern web application principles.

While you will not see any visible changes right now, this lays the foundation for greater streamlining of application builds and will enable us to bring you new features and enhancements to usability and experience in Helix much faster in the future. 

29 February, 2024

Operational update

Updated MBS fee file: The updated MBS fee file as of 1 March is available to download here for uploading into Helix

There is a 30 second video guide available here on how to update the Medicare Benefit Schedule in Helix.

It is important to set the “Effective date” to 1 March 2024 so that the item codes along with their current pricing loads during issuing or saving the invoice.

The effective date cannot be back dated.  Either the current date or a future date can be selected.

Enhancements ✨

User Permissions – Appointments category: The list of permissions in the Appointments category has been consolidated and renamed for clarity.

Where two or more permissions have been merged, the new permission will be automatically enabled for any role with the original permission.

User Permissions – Healthcare Professional permission: To simplify managing the list of HCPs, the existing Healthcare professional permission has been moved from the ‘Role’ level and is now a tick box on the individual user account settings.

The tick box is displayed next to the existing ‘Role’ dropdown selector:

It is important to ensure this Healthcare professional tick box is ticked for any user that is providing clinical services to patients.

If the user is already in a role which had this permission selected, the tick box will be preselected on their account settings.

The Healthcare professional tick box behaves exactly the same way as selecting an ‘HCP’ role for a user; it allows clinician-specific information (such as provider number) to be recorded for the user, ensures their name appears in ‘HCP’ selectors and filters across the application, and streamlines various functions for clinical useability.

For more information, see Healthcare professional and Add a User.

New templates 📝

• CRS Obstetrics & Gynaecology Referral
• CRS Outpatient Paediatric Appointment – WA
• Application for authorisation of Schedule 8 medicines – WA
• Infectious and Related Diseases Notification Form – WA
• Geriatrition referral – WAGS – WA
• Cremation Form 7 – WA
• CRS adult general ref WA

From 1 November 2023 higher bulk billing incentives for Commonwealth concession card holders and patients aged under 16 years of age will be introduced and may be co-claimed with the specific consultation items. Please see the MBS Online Fact Sheet for Bulk Billing in General Practice here for further information. 

The new MBS Item numbers that are being released on 1 November to support the triple incentive items are included in the November MBS Fee Update. 

It is not currently possible to automatically add the relevant incentives to only the applicable MBS items 91801, 91802 and 91920 Video Telehealth, and the 91900 and 91910 Phone Telehealth items as this incentive is reliant on the patient being registered at their practice through MyMedicare. At this stage, a patient’s MyMedicare registration is not able to be stored within Helix and therefore unable to be verified as part of this billing workflow. Software Vendors, the MSIA and Services Australia are working together to make this possible in the future.  

To add the new incentive item numbers for eligible patients requires 3 steps detailed below: 

1. Download the November MBS fee schedule
2. Import into Helix MBS fee schedule

Enable Incentives for the item numbers: 

1. Go to ’Settings’
2. Go to ‘Centre’. Click on ‘Centre settings’
3. Find your practice and click the ‘Edit’ icon’
4. Go to ‘Billing’
5. Add the new incentive item number into the ‘Bulk Billing Default Incentive Item No’ field.
6. Click ‘Save’
   

13 March, 2024

Enhancements ✨

AIR Conformance – Community Changes: As part of the 1 March 2024 legislative changes, the following fields have been added to Helix to support reporting to AIR.

• ‘Route of Administration’ field for the JEV vaccines is mandatory when submitting an encounter.

• ‘Vaccine Type’ field is mandatory for all vaccines prescribed under AIR when submitting an encounter (this includes COVID-19, influenza, NIP and JEV vaccines). Exception to this is vaccines administered overseas.

• If vaccine is administered overseas, then country field will display.

8 February, 2024

Technical upgrades 🛠️

Transition to Azure Service bus from NATS: We have overhauled the technology that supports messaging and queueing between Medicare and Helix.  This improvement will help reduce or stop any loss of information between the two systems.

Enhancements ✨

Date restrictions removed from Daily Visit Report: The Daily Visit Report has been renamed to ‘Visit Report’ and enhancements made to the date range.

There are now no limitations to the date range for this report, allowing for expanded reporting periods.

User Permission Realignment – Visits and Patients category: As part of the ongoing user permissions revision, the lists of permissions in the Visits and Patients categories have been consolidated and renamed for clarity.

Where two or more permissions have been merged, any roles with the source permissions will still have the merged permission.

Bug fixes 🐛

Immunisation historical records failing to be retrieved: We have fixed an issue from the previous update where the historical immunisation records were unable to be retrieved. 

23 January, 2024

Immunisation update 💉

January 2024: The following has been added to the Helix immunisation schedule:

• COMIRNATY OMICRON XBB.1.5 injection 30mcg/0.3mL
• SPIKEVAX XBB.1.5 injection 0.05mg/0.5mL (0.1mg/mL) 

Bug fixes 🐛

Dynamic appointment types not showing on [New] Appointment Report: The [New] Appointment report previously was not capturing dynamic appointment types.

This bug has now been fixed and all appointment types now show when the report is run.

This report can be utilised to view all appointment types, appointment statuses, appointments by HCP and appointments by work area. 

Emailing feature in Letter Writer inaccessible to clinics without HealthLink access: We have addressed a bug where clinics without HealthLink access were not able to access the emailing feature. This has now been rectified.

11 January, 2024

Immunisation update 💉

December 2023: ‘VERORAB powder for injection’ 3.25 units has been added to Helix’s Immunisation schedule.

Enhancements ✨

Filter added to SMD Outbox view: A filter button has been added to the SMD Outbox to allow you to view a list of either your own documents or all documents.

MBS Incentive items auto-populate for custom roles: We have extended the automatic population of MBS incentive items on a visit to include HCPs of any role, including custom roles.

Previously, they would only populate for roles GP, MDGP or LeadGP.

Visits with a referral will not automatically include the incentive items, and patients must meet the eligible criteria.

Recall Management settings – Centre selection list: In Settings > Centre > Recall Management, the ‘Centre’ selection dropdown list is now filtered to centres linked to you. Roles with the ‘All Centres’ permission will be able to select any centre.  

Bug fixes 🐛

Patient address appearing in patient header: The patient address (suburb and state) now appears consistently in the patient header when the panel is full width.

27 November, 2023

New MyMedicare Registration Template 

We have implemented a template to minimise the impact on patient registration. When you want to register patients for MyMedicare, we have created a form that will auto-populate to help customers streamline the workflow. These templates can be accessed in Letter Writer by simply searching for ‘MyMedicare Patient Registration Form’.

Click on ‘Generate’ and you will have the form ready with patient details filled out.

Other Useful Links:

• About MyMedicare
• Information for MyMedicare patients
• Information for MyMedicare practices and providers
• MyMedicare Webinars
• MyMedicare Resources