Hospitals Index Page

PHacts (private hospitals activities)

This is PHacts ('Private Hospital activities') – the electronic newsletter for private hospitals. PHacts aims to provide private hospital staff with information on innovations, changes to processes, and reports on various DVA activities as well as contact details for relevant business areas.

• PHacts newsletter – August 2008 (PDF 3.8MB)
• PHacts newsletter – April 2008 (PDF 911kB)

Updated Group Accommodation and Theatre Banding Schedule

The updated Group Accommodation and Theatre Banding Schedule is now available on the DVA Hospital Resources page under the Group Accommodation and Theatre Banding Schedule heading. These details are provided in two tables the CMBS Based Group Accommodation and Theatre Banding Schedule and the ICD10 6th Edition Medical Group Accommodation Banding Schedule. These tables are now available in Excel and pdf formats.

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Acute Care Certificate

An Acute Care Certificate has been developed by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) in response to the abolition of the requirement for 3B certificates under the Private Health Insurance (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Act 2007. While there is now no legislative requirement to continue with 3B certificates, DVA will continue with its current contractual requirement for hospitals to issue acute care certificates where acute care is provided to veteran patients for 35 days. This Acute Care Certificate can be used instead of the 3B certificate that was previously available from the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA).

Where hospitals still have access to the DoHA 3B certificate, they should continue to use it. The Acute Care Certificate provided by DVA is to be used by hospitals when the 3B certificate is no longer available to them.

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Guidelines for proposals for hospital-based services and/or programs for DVA entitled persons

DVA welcomes and encourages providers to submit proposals that may improve the health outcomes in the veteran population.

To assist hospitals to understand what DVA is looking for, the criteria that DVA uses to evaluate new hospital-based services and programs for veteran care is provided. These guidelines are not intended to be prescriptive or to constrain innovation, but are intended to assist both parties with having a shared understanding of the services and programs on offer and how they interface with other DVA arrangements.

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Updated Department of Veterans' Affairs six–monthly quality reporting template

The Quality Reporting template heading and page footer have been updated to include references to the Tier 1 Hospital Services Agreement confidentiality clause. This is now available on the Hospital Resources page under the Quality Reporting heading. As previously advised, this template is to be used in line with the new approach to quality reporting for those hospitals involved in veteran partnering arrangements.

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Discharge planners – link to updated Veterans' Home Care (VHC) contacts

A link to updated contact details for VHC assessment agencies is now available on the Hospital Resources page under the Discharge Planning heading. This will assist discharge planners when making arrangements for VHC services.

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Information for Tier 2 hospitals – information package

The Tier 2 Hospital Information Package is now available on the Hospital Resources page under the Information for Tier 2 Hospitals heading. This package provides important information for hospitals regarding the Tier 2 hospital arrangements.

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Updated allied health fee schedules

Those hospitals with agreed Allied Health outpatient services under their Tier 1 Agreement please note that updated Allied Health fee schedules are available at http://www.dva.gov.au/health/provider/provider.htm.

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October 2006 update – information kits for Tier 1 hospitals:

A new section, Outpatient Allied Health Items, has been included in the October 2006 update of the Information Kits to clarify arrangements for item numbers and rates where a hospital has agreed Allied Health outpatient services under their Tier 1 Agreement. This section also provides details on How to Claim these items. Updated Information Kits are available on the Hospital Resources Page.

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Surgically implanted prostheses schedule

The latest listing of the Surgically Implanted Prostheses Schedule from the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) is available from the DoHA website at the following link:
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/health-privatehealth-prostheseslist.htm

Please refer to the section titled: "Arrangements for listing and setting benefits for prostheses" where you will find the schedule available in four different versions - PDF, Access, Word and Excel.

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Certain MBS coronary angiography items

Updated Information Kits for Tier 1 Hospitals: Clarified MBS Coronary Angiography Items Section:
A revised description has been included to further assist in claiming MBS coronary angiography items. Information kits have been updated to include the following

When the (6) coronary angiography items (in the grey-shaded column below) were added to the MBS schedule, the National Theatre Banding Committee (NPBC) was unable to assign appropriate theatre bands to them and the items were not added to the GATB schedule. As these items were rollups/combinations of other existing MBS items, they could only be successfully processed by claiming the combinations of items which they were replacing. At that time the NPBC recommended that the accommodation group for each of the 6 items would be S2.

Subsequently, a workaround has been agreed and implemented; these same 6 items have been added to the GATB schedule and should be claimed directly, but for full payment to occur ALL the items must be claimed from the relevant row of the 2nd column in the table. (The multiple procedure discount rules will then apply as per clause 17.11.2 of your Agreement.)

Rolled-up MBS Item No.	MBS/Theatre Band combination to be claimed by hospitals (multiple procedure rules apply)	Surgical Accommodation Group
38225	38225 + 38220	S2
38228	38228 + 38222	S2
38231	38231 + 38222 + 38220	S2
38234	38234 + 38220	S2
38237	38237 + 38222	S2
38240	38240 + 38222 + 38220	S2

Critical Care Certificate

Updated Information Kits for Tier 1 Hospitals: Clarified Requirements for Critical Care Certificates
The previous version of these kits indicated that critical care certificates were not required in circumstances where a patient required critical care for 10 days or less. This is not the case. Information kits have been updated to include the following advice:

Where a patient requires critical care for 10 days or less, a Critical Care Certificate covering a period of not more than 10 days is required. Where the length of stay in the Critical Care Unit exceeds 10 days a subsequent Critical Care Certificate is required.
Please retain Critical Care Certificates on the patient file for audit purposes. You should not send original Critical Care Certificates to either Medicare Australia or DVA.