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

• You must be using Best Practice Oxford and have the AOB feature turned on in both Best Practice and HotDoc (Medicare Hub > Settings).
   
• Make sure your patients' contact details are up to date in Best Practice so we can reach them.
   
• When you turn this on, we'll send a consent request for any patient appointment or invoice (face-to-face or telehealth) that you've set to Managed externally so the patient can provide their consent. We no longer use the item numbers and if bill to: medicare direct bill. 
   
• Post-assignment consent: We'll send a request when the invoice's AOB is marked as Managed externally and you click Generate and store.
   
• Pre-assignment consent (temporarily unavailable due to a bug in BP): once you send this in HotDoc, we'll sync it and update it in BP. If the items don't match after the appointment, we can send the patient another request to consent to the updated service.
   
• 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.

1. 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.
   • This tells HotDoc to send the consent request and the status changes to Pending for the patient's appointment in Best Practice.
     
     
      
2. 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.
    
3. 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.
    
4. 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

Pre-assignment consent lets your patients agree to bulk billing up to 7 days before their appointment. To send a pre-assignment consent:

1. 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
    
2. The patient approves or declines: the appointment shows Approved or Declined in Best Practice and in your Dashboard.
   
    
3. The patient has their appointment: the practitioner then adds the MBS items as usual.
    
4. 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.

1. 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.
   
2. We send a new request for the patient to approve: HotDoc sends your patient a new consent form for the updated items and lets them know it replaces the earlier one. 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

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.