2020 March 18

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UPDATED ITEMS FILE Version 20.2

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Effective 1 March 2020, Medicare made a number of changes to intensive care and emergency items, including new items and deletions. For details see the Medicare fact sheets on intensive care and emergency medicine, or this summary page. We delayed releasing the file while waiting on some health funds to release new fee schedules, and we are still waiting on updates for GUH & NIB. Medicare released a further update effective March 13 with new items for video & telephone consultations related to the Covid-19 virus. These have also been added to the latest update, although fund fees are only available for DVA for these items. Further updates will be released as appropriate.

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Eclipse Webservices

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You may have received a letter from Medicare informing you about the change from electronic transactions using the current ‘Client Adaptor’ technology to a new ‘Web services’ technology by March 2022. Access Anaesthetics uses the ‘Client Adaptor’ technology, while the new Cutting Edge/AA software will use the ‘Web services’ technology. Our team is working on the necessary changes, and migration of AA clients to the new software will occur well in time for the changeover. We will keep you up to date with developments as they occur. There is nothing you need to do at present.

The same letter also refers to NASH certificates. Again, there is nothing for you to do at present. We will monitor this aspect carefully and in the unlikely event that you are affected, we will contact you well ahead of the 2022 deadline to implement any required security changes.

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A note about our COVID-19 preparation

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The coming weeks and months may be a difficult period for everyone due to the actions needed to limit the spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We will work with you to do what we can to assist as you make your own contingency plans. Cutting Edge Software and Access Anaesthetics have business-continuity plans in place, and we believe we're well-prepared to continue our essential business and support functions. We have had a virtual office strategy in place for over 10 years, with well-adapted processes and technologies to work remotely at times such as this. At present most of our staff are already working from home, and we’re confident that all business-critical functions can continue to operate. We have also instituted a restriction on travel and will not conduct any face-to-face meetings or site visits for the foreseeable future. We will continue to provide remote support by email, phone and remote screen-sharing sessions as needed, and ask for your patience and understanding if response times are a little longer than usual.

If you have any questions or concerns about our contingency plans, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team, we're here and ready to assist you!

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Consider moving to the AA Virtual Server

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We’ve had questions from several clients about their own contingency plans. If you haven't already made the move, now is an excellent time for user of installed versions of AA to consider moving to our high performance Virtual Server. The advantages are clear, you can access all your data from any computer with an internet connection, giving you flexible and secure access to AA should you need to reduce face-to-face office hours or work from home for extended periods. On the server, our support staff take care of all schedule & fee updates and backups for you. The server has 24/7 monitoring to ensure high availability. Other advantages of the Virtual Server are listed here.