75 + Health Assessments
The 75+ Health Assessment provides an opportunity to improve the health of your older patients while also generating extra income for your practice. Conducting the 75+ Health Assessments is a great way to engage with your older practice population. It provides a structured way of identifying health issues and conditions that are potentially preventable or amenable to intervention.
How does the 75+ Health Assessment help my business?
Completing 75+ Health Assessments helps to:
- Build relationships and trust with your older patients, which may help their loyalty to you or your practice and make them more likely to come back for their future care.
- It is also likely that you will pick up on new health issues that need addressing, or existing conditions that are not being managed as well as they could be. This may lead to the patient being recalled to the practice for a GP Management Plan or a Mental Health Treatment Plan, which can improve the care of these patients and improve practice income.
- Provide protected time for planning supports that may be required to; maintain a patients’ current level of independence and mobility, assist patients stay socially active within their community and
- Provide protected time for Advanced care planning decisions.
Set up your practice processes
Consider developing a practice policy and streamlining systems and processes within your practice.
Helpful tips
- Identify a team member who can identify eligible patients and recall them either using your clinical software or PEN / POLAR clinical audit Tool
- Check with Provider Digital Access (PRODA) to see if patients have already had a 75+ Health Assessment billed in the last 12 months before recalling
- Make sure your staff know the booking rules for health assessments – Time spent with the nurse and time spent with the GP
- Make sure your GPs are aware of the correct item number to be billed and the billing rules
- Review your practice current 75+ health assessment template and how it might be improved
- Ensure your GPs and nurses know where to record advance care plans or directives in the practice software
- Have a process to ensure patients are then put back on recall in 12 months for another assessment
- Regularly complete data cleansing activities to establish up to date lists (registers) of eligible patients due for the 75+ years health assessment
- Measure the baseline improvement in the percentage of 75+ Health Assessments in your practice
Plan your 75+ Health Assessments
Health assessments work best if done in a planned way.
Helpful tips
- Consider using a Practice Nurse. A Practice Nurse can conduct the majority of the 75+ Health Assessment and may have more flexibility than a GP to visit a patient at home. The patient must still see the GP to follow up on findings and recommendations and for the item to be billed. By seeing the patient in their own environment, you may be able to detect problems that may not be obvious in the consulting room.
- Note: The patient can see the GP on a separate day, but processes need to be in place to alert the GP to complete and bill the assessment.
- It is also important to note that the 75+ Health Assessment item cannot be billed in conjunction with another consultation on the same day, except where it is clinically required (for example the patient has an acute problem that needs to be managed separately from the assessment).
Medicare health assessment items
The Medicare health assessment items can be claimed annually and include GP and Practice Nurse time. Visit MBS Online for further information
For further information on 75+ Health assessments visit the Australian Government Department of Health 75+ Health Assessment webpage
