AIR Provider Numbers and completed immunisations

Applies to: Practices using Bp Premier version Saffron Service Pack 3 only

Description

Doctors and Nurse Practitioners in your practice may be impacted by a problem that has been identified relating to the issue of Information Payments from Services Australia for recording specific encounters on the AIR. These payments may have been issued to the incorrect provider.

Information Payments are issued by Services Australia to vaccination providers who complete a child’s immunisation schedule, or administer a catch-up immunisation for a child. More information about these Information Payments is available here.

• When recording an immunisation for a patient in Bp Premier, both a ‘Billing Provider’, and a ‘Given By’ user can be nominated.
• The Billing Provider’s AIR Provider Number should be what is transmitted to AIR, and is used by Services Australia to issue eligible Information Payments to these providers.
• In Saffron SP3, the Given By user’s AIR Provider Number has been transmitted to AIR instead, with the following consequences:
  • If the vaccination was recorded as given by a different user to the billing provider, and the Given by user does not have an individual provider number, your practice’s AIR provider number at location level will have been submitted instead of the billing provider’s
  • If the vaccination was recorded as given by a different user to the billing provider, and the Given by user has their own individual provider number, the 'Given by' provider's provider number will have been submitted instead of the billing provider’s
  • The Information Payment will have been issued to your practice-wide AIR provider number, or the 'Given by' provider's provider number, instead of the billing provider’s.

If 'Given by' is set to a different staff member to Billing Provider:

The value in the Location's AIR Provider Number, or the 'Given by' provider's provider number will be sent to AIR for the immunisation.

What does this mean for your practice?

Since your upgrade to Saffron SP3, any Information Payments that your Doctors or Nurse Practitioners are expecting from Services Australia will have instead been issued to your practice, if they were recorded as given by another practice staff member.

These Information Payments will appear on the immunisation payment statement for your practice’s location instead of being visible on the immunisation payment statement for the individual provider.

Resolution

We have rectified this issue in the upcoming release of Saffron SP3 Revision 1 (due May 2022).

Best Practice Software will communicate with all practices when SP3 Revision 1 is available to download and install.

If you have entered a Location AIR provider number in Saffron SP3 and you have sent AIR claims where the 'Given by' user is not the same as the billing provider, then you may need to redistribute information payments to the correct provider depending on your practice policies.

To do this, compare the Immunisation notifications reconciliation report available in HPOS to what is recorded in Bp Premier.

1. Log into your PRODA account.
2. Select HPOS, expand the Payment Statements menu item and select Immunisation Payment Statement.
3. Filter the Immunisation Payment Statement list to show reports for your Practice AIR Provider number, or for the individual provider number which may have had information payments incorrectly allocated.
4. Click View CSV in the Immunisation notifications reconciliation report column for the reporting period in which the incorrect payments were made.

A CSV file will download with details on which patients were included in the payment.

5. Open each patient included in the report in Bp Premier and check which immunisations they have been given, and who the billing provider was set to. In the immunisation window, the billing provider is listed in the Ordered by column.



6. Once the correct provider is known, funds can be redistributed as needed per practice policies.

Last updated: 13 May 2022