The most common reasons for rejected claims are:
- The service has already been paid under a previous Medicare/DVA claim.
- Maximum number of services has already been paid
for the patient (eg. Medicare EPC).
- The submitted patient Medicare/DVA details do
not match Medicare/DVA records.
- Incorrect Item Code attached to the claim.
- The practitioner providing the service has not
been properly registered for online claiming, or has not been registered to
submit online claims from that location.
- Missing information necessary to claim (eg. referring doctor provider number, date of referral or details of the injury treated for DVA white card holders).
In the event a claim has not been successful or has not returned a valid report from Medicare/DVA, the following steps will allow you to resubmit the claim.
Step 1 – Locating the claim
Go to the System menu and
select Medicare/DVA Claims.
You will now need to locate the unsuccessful claim. The claim will normally be listed under the 'Incomplete' or 'Failed' status. If you are having difficulty locating the claim, select the 'All' option to display all claims regardless of status and ensure the date range selected is appropriate.
The claim number can be matched against the
transaction listing within the patient's file to ensure you have the correct
claim selected.
From the Medicare/DVA Claims window, highlight the
unsuccessful claim and click Reports. This will attempt to retrieve
a report directly from Medicare or DVA with information on the claim status.
The 'Medicare Explanation Code' is retrieved directly from Medicare/DVA
and provides basic information on the claim status. If you require
further information on explanation code interpretation please contact Medicare
Online Claiming support on 1800 700 199.
In the event no report is available and two business days have passed,
contact Medicare support to confirm the claim has been received.
If the claim was not received correctly, confirm that the practitioner
is correctly registered for Medicare Online Claiming before resubmitting.
After determining the cause of the unsuccessful claim, correct the error(s) in the patient file using the information provided by the explanation code and Medicare or DVA. Once the error has been corrected, you are now ready to resubmit the claim.
Step 2 – Resubmitting the claim
If the claim requires resubmission, the existing claim will first need to be deleted before a new claim may be submitted using the original transaction.
Locate and highlight the claim within Medicare/DVA Claims, and select Delete.
It is
recommended that you contact Medicare/DVA to confirm resubmission is the
correct course of action before resubmitting the claim. Please note if
Medicare/DVA delete the claim from their system, you will no longer be able to
delete the claim using Front Desk. If necessary, it is important that the claim
is deleted within Front Desk first, before being removed by Medicare/DVA.
Once the claim has been deleted from the Medicare/DVA Claims window,
it can be resubmitted from the Patient File using the existing
transaction. Open the patient file, and select Transactions.

Complete the Medicare/DVA claiming wizard to resubmit the claim using the corrected information.
Congratulations! You have successfully resubmitted a Medicare/DVA claim.
After waiting 24-48 hours you can then process the claim to ensure it was successful.
Timothy, Business Care Manager
Medicare / DVA reports are only available for Medicare Online directly in Front Desk. If you require reports for EasyClaim, these can only be obtained outside of Front Desk and you need to have Medicare setup access to the Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) website. Contact Medicare on 1800 700 199 for more info.
<< We use Easyclaim because I could not get the Online claiming to balance against the amounts received and I could not ascertain which had been paid & which hadn't from the reports.>>
Medicare Online is a better interface than EasyClaim and the one recommend by Medicare for electronic claiming for any practice that submits more than the occasional claim and for anyone who wants to make DVA claims. The 2 systems have different implementations in relation to how items are paid off in Front Desk.
For Medicare (and DVA) Online when you submit a claim for an item it is not immediately marked as paid though the claim has been transmitted to Medicare, as claims are not processed in real time but generally within 48 hours. Each day, we recommend that you request a report from Medicare by clicking ‘Process’ on the Medicare / DVA Claims window. At this time any new paid items by Medicare will automatically be processed in Front Desk and payment automatically reconciled on each patient's file. For items that have not been paid, a reason is provided by Medicare and an opportunity is provided to make changes and re-submit. You will also have access to up-to-date Medicare payment reports to help with any reconciliation.
Alternatively, Easyclaim Bulk Bill claims are submitted through your Tyro/HICAPS terminal. Once the claim is submitted, the item is added as an outstanding amount on the patient's file. The key difference is that there is no utility in Front Desk to automatically check for claim updates, and therefore no automatic reconciliation of payments once processed by Medicare. Note that you should not assume that an Easyclaim Bulk Bill Claim will be paid simply because it is accepted by your terminal as this is only a confirmation it has been received by Medicare for processing at a later time. You do need to manually reconcile these payments on each patient's file.
Lin
Stuart Blyth
Hi Lin
Its strange you are having an issue with On line claiming, we find it a fantastic time saver and highly accurate. We have 6 sites and run a few hundred transaction claims a week through it and it takes minutes to balance most weeks. The reports are great especially now the provider numbers are shown to quickly match up against the bank statements.
I would highly suggest working through your issues with the help desk so you can get on track and take advantage of this great feature in FD, good luck!
Stuart
Tony Taddeo, Managing Director
Our Medicare Online implementation is widely used and we are unaware of any reconciling issues if used correctly. Our users should be using Medicare Online where possible.
I will recap how the payment – reconcile process works.
To reconcile Medicare Bulk Bill and DVA payments, the first step is to get the processing and payment reports from Medicare. This should be done daily, and it’s done by simply clicking “Process” on the Medicare / DVA Claims window. This downloads all available payment reports for Medicare for any outstanding claims, and automatically pays off the transactions in Front Desk. Any claims which can’t be paid are marked as incomplete and you can view the reasons for non-payment by selecting a claim and clicking the “Reports” button.
You can then use the Medicare / DVA Report under the Reports menu. This allows you to select a date range for bank deposits, and groups payments by Bank Account Name / Number / BSB, and then by Payment Run Date, Payment Run Number, and Payee Provider Number. This gives you enough information to easily reconcile with a bank statement. Deposit amount totals are included (for each payment run), and below each payment you can see details of the claims that have been paid.
Lin - As you already have Medicare Online installed, I suggest you try it again using the above instructions. If you still feel the reconciling process is not working for you, please contact us by opening a support case.
www.smartsoft.com.au/support