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New chronic condition management MBS items incoming
A long list of 1 November changes includes four new phone attendance items, alongside three-year-old health check items.
Four new phone attendance items for chronic condition management have been announced.
From 1 November, four new phone attendance items for chronic condition management will be launched as part of a long list of incoming MBS changes announced on Friday.
The new items, 92033, 92034, 92063 and 92064, will be for attendances by a GP or prescribed medical practitioner to prepare or review a chronic condition management plan for a patient.
RACGP President Dr Michael Wright welcomed the change.
‘For many GPs, you can do the initial one in person, but often it will be appropriate to do a review, which you can do as a video, and now with these latest item numbers, you can do this where appropriate,’ he told newsGP.
‘These really are designed for providing ongoing care for patients.
‘We saw during the pandemic that we provided so much more telehealth when it wasn’t safe to see people face to face, and there are still circumstances where that’ll be appropriate.’
The new items follow significant changes to the chronic disease management framework which came into effect in 2025 and saw items for the preparation of GP management plans, team care arrangements and reviews replaced with a new GP chronic condition management plan.
Another significant addition announced on Friday is a new MBS health assessment service, the Medicare Healthy Kids Check, for three-year-old children. From November, GPs can carry out the checks using existing time-tiered health assessment items 701–07, while other prescribed medical practitioners can use items 224–227.
This check has been long advocated for by the RACGP and was recommended by the Thriving Kids Advisory Group to improve early identification of developmental delay or neurodevelopmental differences in children.
‘This is something the college has been pushing for since it was removed a number of years ago, so it’s really good to see that kids will be able to have this proper developmental assessment,’ Dr Wright said.
‘There will also be a focus for GPs to really help people access the care they need early.’
Other MBS changes coming on 1 November include:
- expanding ambulatory blood pressure monitoring item 11607 to include child and adolescent blood pressure measurements and thresholds
- enabling immunomodulating treatment item 14245 to be provided by a qualified health practitioner on behalf of the prescribing medical practitioner
- enabling participating nurse practitioners to refer patients for bone mineral densitometry services described in items 12306 to 12322
- enabling services provided under item 45518 to be performed outside of a hospital setting
- amending item 18360 to provide treating clinicians access to a third pharmaceutical option (Xeomin) to treat patients with moderate and severe focal spasticity caused by a neurological disorder
- expanding the definitions of the terms ‘eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health worker’ and ‘health professional’ in relation to services to which item 73813 applies for detection of infection with chlamydia trachomatis, neisseria gonorrhoeae or trichomonas vaginalis.
Several other changes relating to diagnostic imaging services and pathology services were also announced –
a full list is available online.
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chronic conditions MBS MBS items Medicare Benefits Schedule Thriving Kids
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