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This feature is currently in trial and will be available soon to all practices using Best Practice Oxford Assignment of Benefit and HotDoc Bulk Billing Consent. This is for post-assignment consent, not enduring consent. |
HotDoc now works with Best Practice (BP) Oxford’s Assignment of Benefit (AOB) feature to collect bulk billing consent from your patients and sync their responses to BP.
When you mark an invoice’s AOB as Managed externally, HotDoc sends your patient a consent form. Their response updates automatically in Best Practice, and you can send off the claim to Medicare as expected.
This guide covers post-assignment and pre-assignment consent, as well as amended invoices for rejected claims where a patient needs to provide their consent again.
There will be changes to the HotDoc Dashboard to show you more information about a consent request.
How the HotDoc x Best Practice Assignment of Benefit (AOB) integration works
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You must be using Best Practice Oxford SP1 and have the AOB feature turned on in both Best Practice and HotDoc (Medicare Hub > Settings).
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Make sure your patients' contact details are up to date in Best Practice so we can reach them.
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Once the sync is on, we'll send a consent request for any face-to-face or telehealth appointment whose invoice you've set to Managed externally. We no longer use item numbers or whether the invoice is billed to Medicare direct bill to decide when to send a request, and the telehealth and face-to-face settings in the HotDoc Dashboard no longer control this.
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Post-assignment consent: We'll send a request when the invoice's AOB is marked as Managed externally and you click Generate and store.
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Pre-assignment consent is temporarily unavailable due to a known issue with Best Practice's AOB feature. We've turned off Send a Pre-assignment Consent in the HotDoc Dashboard until Best Practice fixes it. Use post-assignment consent for now.
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Enduring & verbal consent: We do not send an AOB consent request when the assignment of benefit is marked as Enduring consent or Verbal consent in Best Practice.
- To see AOB status in Best Practice next to the patient's appointment: go to Setup > Configuration > Appointments, tick Automatically show assignment of benefit from request status on appointment book, then click Save.
1. Post-assignment consent
HotDoc sends a consent request for any telehealth or face-to-face appointment where the assignment of benefit is set to Managed externally.
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In Best Practice: the doctor finalises the visit with the MBS items. Reception then creates the account. Under Assignment of benefit, select Do not generate assignment of benefit > Managed externally, then click Generate and store.
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This tells HotDoc to send the consent request and the status changes to Pending for the patient's appointment in Best Practice.
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This tells HotDoc to send the consent request and the status changes to Pending for the patient's appointment in Best Practice.
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HotDoc sends the request: HotDoc sends your patient a consent request straight away. Telehealth visits get a push notification, email or SMS. Face-to-face visits get a push notification or email.
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The patient approves or declines: they open the link, verify their details, review the form and tap I agree to bulk bill this service to approve, or they can decline.
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We update Best Practice: the appointment shows Approved or Declined in your appointment book, and the signed form is saved as a PDF in the patient's Correspondence In. You can now send the claim to Medicare.
2. Pre-assignment consent
| There's a known issue with Best Practice's AOB feature: after the appointment, you can't select the patient's pre-assignment consent on the invoice, or send an updated request if the items have changed. We've turned off Send a Pre-assignment Consent in the HotDoc Dashboard until Best Practice fixes this. Use post-assignment consent for now. |
Pre-assignment consent lets your patients agree to bulk billing up to 7 days before their appointment.
How pre-assignment consent works once it's available again
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In the HotDoc Dashboard: on the Bulk Billing Consent page, click Send a Pre-assignment Consent. We send it to your patient by push notification or email. See how to send pre-assignment consents
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The patient approves or declines: the appointment shows Approved or Declined in Best Practice and in your Dashboard.
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The patient has their appointment: the practitioner then adds the MBS items as usual.
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On the invoice, select Do not generate assignment of benefit, then:
- If the items match the pre-assignment consent: select Benefit assigned on [date], click Generate and store and claim as usual.
- If the items have changed: select Managed externally. We'll send your patient a new consent request for the updated items.
3. When a patient needs to consent again (rejected claims and adjusted services)
If a service is adjusted or the item numbers for a patient's appointment change after the patient has already provided consent, we can now send them an updated request to consent to the adjusted items.
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In Adjust billing, select Change item number, set Assignment of benefit to Do not generate assignment of benefit, select Managed externally, then click Generate and store.
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We send a new request for the patient to approve: HotDoc sends your patient a new consent request for the updated items. The first message tells them their billing has been updated, so they know it replaces the earlier request. Once they approve, we update the status in Best Practice, and you can resubmit the claim to Medicare.
- Note: if you amend the service on a patient's invoice, it won't change the AOB status on the appointment, as the AOB relates to the invoice, not the appointment.
What appears in the HotDoc Dashboard
Under Medicare Hub > Bulk Billing Consent, we'll be making changes to improve visibility of a patient's consent history so you can see a timeline. These changes will be ready in the next few weeks.
- Only consent requests marked as 'Managed externally' will appear in the HotDoc Dashboard. If you selected verbal or enduring consent, or sent via SMS/Printer in BP, these will not appear.
- We have removed the 'Mark as Complete' button in the Dashboard, as this does not update anything in Best Practice. For requests that are outstanding (for example, if a patient doesn't reply and you capture verbal consent instead), please update this directly in BP.
FAQs
Where can I see all our completed, outstanding and pending assignments of benefit in BP?
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Go to Management > Follow up Assignment of Benefit. When requests are completed or declined via HotDoc, we update them here.
See Best Practice's guide: Follow up Assignment of Benefit
AOB status (pending, approved, declined) isn't showing in BP
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Go to Setup > Configuration > Appointments, tick Automatically show assignment of benefit from request status on appointment book, then click Save.
I amended an invoice – why didn't the status update in the appointment book?
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When you amend an invoice, the new AOB record is attached to the invoice, not the appointment, so the status won't appear or update in the patient's appointment book.
Will HotDoc send a consent form to a patient who already has enduring consent?
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No. If you select Enduring consent in the AOB section, HotDoc won’t send the patient a form. HotDoc only sends AOB consent forms when you select Managed externally.
Previously, HotDoc created consent requests from invoice details, which meant some patients with enduring consent received forms. This no longer happens.