Connecting Health Services With the Future: Overview for Residential Aged Care Facilities
From 1 July 2011, Medicare and DVA rebates and financial incentives will be available for telehealth under the Connecting Health Services With the Future initiative. This page provides information about the initiative for residential aged care facilities.
In 2010, the Government committed to providing Medicare and DVA rebates for video consultations across a range of medical specialties.
Telehealth services offer real benefits for Australians. This initiative will help Australians in remote, regional and outer metropolitan areas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and Australians in residential aged care to access specialist medical services earlier and without the time and expense of travelling.
Telehealth MBS Items
New MBS items for telehealth will be available from 1 July 2011. There will be items for video consultations (where specialist consultations are provided to eligible patients, including aged care residents, via video conferencing) and items for patient-end services (provided by a health professional who is located with the patient during a specialist video consultation).
Financial Incentives
The Government is introducing financial incentives, from 1 July 2011, to encourage and support the provision of telehealth services to Australians in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACF) throughout Australia.
These financial incentives will encourage:
- Eligible Telehealth Practitioners to provide Telehealth Services to their patients while in RACF; and
- RACFs to provide Hosting Services to their residents.
The incentives will also support practitioners and RACFs to adapt existing practice and business to integrate telehealth into their services.
Two types of Incentives are available for RACFs:
- A RACF On-Board Incentive; and
- Telehealth Hosting Service Incentives.
The simplified descriptions below are provided for information only. For full details on eligibility and processes, refer to the telehealth program guidelines.
RACF On-Board Incentive
This is a one-off payment to encourage Eligible RACFs to provide appropriate facilities and resources to host telehealth consultations.
RACFs will need to meet the eligibility criteria set out in the telehealth program guidelines, provide at least one Hosting Service and after hosting the service, submit an Application for Telehealth Hosting Service Incentive Payment to receive this incentive.
Once the Dept of Human Services has determined that an RACF is eligible for this incentive, the payment (at the rate shown in the table below) will be made as part of the monthly Aged Care Services payment run.
 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 |
| RACF On-board Incentive (one-off) | $6,000 | $4,800 | $3,900 | $3,300 |
Telehealth Hosting Service Incentives
These incentives encourage eligible RACFs to provide ongoing hosting services for their residents. Eligible RACFs will need to submit a Claim for Telehealth Hosting Service Incentive Payment to the Dept of Human Services with information on the hosting services they have provided for their residents.
RACFs will be eligible for a Telehealth Hosting Service Incentive (at the rate shown in the table below) each time they provide a Hosting Service. These payments will be made through the monthly Aged Care Services payment run, and included in the on-line statement.
| 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 |
| Telehealth Hosting Service Incentive | $60 | $48 | $39 | $33 |