The Anxiety of Psychological Practice in Australia: Surviving in Private Practice

By Dr. Tony Pastore

Surviving in private practice is not easy when you are accountable to so many statutory bodies such as AHPRA, Medicare WorkCover and the Transport Accident Commission. The legal requirements can be sometimes frightening, daunting and outright scary when you take into consideration the type of penalties that can be applied should you fall out of line with these authorities. From reimbursement of monies to the suspension of your practicing licence (registration), simple mistakes can become quite costly. Litigation frightens all of us. I hope this book can be of some help to psychologists and allied health providers in general who would like to take some of the anxiety out of their private practice.

Learn

how to survive a Medicare Audit or investigation,

how to survive a WorkCover Audit or Investigation,

how to survive an AHPRA Investigation,

how to understand the systems we work under and the consequences thereof,

how to avoid litigation by having sound administrative and clerical procedures,

what to do if ever investigated, and

how to sleep better as a result of taking good business and running an ethical business

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483667140

Dr. Tony Pastore

DR. TONY PASTORE MAPS is fully registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency as a Psychologist and is a full Member of the Australian Psychological Society. He has obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Applied Psychology from the Monash University), a Post Graduate Degree in Psychology from the University of Melbourne and has completed the Clinical Masters equivalent and his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Latrobe University. He is also a member of the College of Clinical Psychologists and of the College of Forensic Psychologists with the Australian Psychological Society. He has been in private practice for 20 years.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Dr Tony Pastore.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4836-6713-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-6714-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/11/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

[e-mail]

504202

Contents

Preface

Disclaimer

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1       How Can This Book Help You?

Chapter 2       Patient Attendance Records

Chapter 3       Surviving a WorkCover (WorkSafe) Audit or Investigation

Chapter 4       How and What to Invoice WorkCover (WorkSafe) When Patients Run Late for their Appointments

Chapter 5       Surviving a Transport Accident Commission (TAC) Audit or Investigation

Chapter 6       Surviving a Medicare Audit or Investigation

Chapter 7       The Confusion over Medicare Item Numbers and the Dos and Don’ts

Chapter 8       Surviving an Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) Investigation

Epilogue

Appendices

To all the practitioners out there who find the administrative, clerical and legal framework they work under daunting, frightening, and outright intimidating.

To my family—Julie, Isabella, and Alessandra.

Thank you so much for your support.

Preface

Why did I write this book? Having been in psychological practice for just over twenty-five years now, I have been constantly asked many questions to help inform people of practices that I have developed over this long period of time.

I knew it was time to write such a book when I attended a professional workshop in relation to private practice and the information I was offering to the group was being written down (during the course of the discussion) by the presenter, to be used presumably for his next upcoming workshop.

I first started as a practitioner, a psychologist in private practice and tried to manage my own affairs. That is to say I saw clients, or patients for those who work in a medical setting, and then had to do all the administrative paperwork associated with that patient. I will mainly use the term patient from here on end, given that most of us now work under the terms and conditions of Medicare and they refer to clients as patients (nevertheless they are one and the same).

From an administrative point of view, it was certainly easier back then. There did not appear to be as much to do. Not much paperwork as such.

In the beginning when I first started psychological practice, the laws that governed it were much simpler. It at least certainly appeared that way. There did not appear to be too many rules that presided over how you would run your practice. I’m not necessarily saying it was better. It just seemed simpler, not as complex and not as daunting as today.

Medicare for psychological services came into existence in November 2006. The Australian Psychological Society (APS) had fewer guidelines at the time. WorkCover (WorkSafe) were not making us use psychological measures and were not making us their advocates in pushing patients back to work prematurely. It certainly appears this way now if you look at their policies that they come up with from time to time that are not necessarily sanctioned in the WorkCover (WorkSafe) legislation (as I am told by some members of the legal profession). Policies are not necessarily laws.

Then the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) eventually introduced the mental health treatment plans and has also made us more accountable to them. They too want us to use psychological measures and to report to them (and they tend to get rather insistent that you provide them with the actual scores) and have a clinical framework from which they want us to work under. And should your services not be helping that patient at a particular point in time, WorkCover (WorkSafe) and the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) are very quick to cease services, and it seems like they are almost punishing the patient and treating provider for not working faster enough in getting the patient back into the workplace (whether the patient is ready to do so or not).

In fact in recent times, WorkCover (WorkSafe) and the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) have combined forces and now have policies that are remarkably similar, and their clinical framework from which they want us to work from are somewhat the same. In some of their correspondence, you will even sometimes see their logos (WorkSafe and TAC) on the same letterhead.

Many psychologists are probably not even aware of the many changes that have occurred over the past seven years as they may have only started practicing psychology in the last few years.

It is evident that since the introduction of Medicare rebates for psychology fees in November 2006 that there has been an explosion of psychologists entering into private practice. Most may well and truly be ill prepared and may have to pay back thousands of dollars to some of these statutory bodies, such as Medicare, WorkCover (WorkSafe), and the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) following an audit or investigation.

In fact, following recent Medicare audits, psychologists have had to pay back thousands of dollars, and there was a steady flow of correspondence with the Australian Psychological Society (APS) in relation to the consequences of these audits for psychologists; and the news overall was not good.

With the advance of all these ‘reforms’, we have had to become more professional and more accountable. I’m not trying to make this out to be a bad thing. We do have to become more accountable. The profession of psychology demands it. We will