How do I renew a location certificate?

Your Medicare Online Location certificate will expire after several years. The certificate needs to be renewed before its expiry date to ensure that online transmissions can continue. If the certificate expires, no transmissions will be possible.

Expiry Date

To find your certificate expiry date, go to the Eclipse menu in AA and it will displayed on the bottom right corner. To have AA retrieve the expiry date from Medicare, click the <Setup> button. Go to the Test tab, then click the <Test> button. This will retrieve the current expiry date from Medicare.

Autorenewal

Since late 2012, Medicare has been renewing certificates automatically. This is done during the normal Eclipse transmissions process when the certificate is accessed by Medicare. If your certificate appears to be nearing its expiry date, follow the steps above to retrieve the updated date.

Manual renewal

In some cases, autorenewal of certificates is not possible. If this is the case, Medicare will mail a reminder letter about 1 month before the certificate expires, to the address that the original certificate was sent to. You will need to complete a renewal form, after which you will receive a new CD that can be installed using the Control Panel > PKI Certificate manager. After sending in the form, it should take 1 - 2 weeks to received the CD.

Here is a direct link to the renewal form.

If that link has changed, here is the page that lists all the online business forms. The renewal form is called Request to Revoke or Reissue a Public Key Infrastructure Certificate form (HW003).

The form requires a PKI Registration Number. This is a 10 digit number that was sent with the original CD and is also on the CD label. If you don't have the number, use the Location ID number that we provided you with (known by Medicare as the 'Minor ID'). This is an 8 character number starting with 'HBS' and is shown on the bottom of the Eclipse Menu in AA.

Once you receive the CD from Medicare and the Medicare PIC (password), follow the instructions below to install it.

1.	Make sure Access Anaesthetics is closed on the PC.

2.	Insert the CD. If a window opens, you can close it.

3.	Click Start > Control Panel > PKI certificate manager.

4.	The window should open your existing location certificate. Its location will be shown in the title bar of the window, normally C:\Access Anaesthetics\hic.psi. For groups, this may be \\Server\AADataFiles\hic.psi.

5.	Click the <Install> button on the top right.

6.	You will be asked for your password. This is the password that you used to create the certificate store, not the Medicare password. If you don't know it, try using your location ID number, which is shown on the Eclipse Menu in AA. If you can't find the password, contact us for further assistance.

7.	You will then be prompted to specify the drive that contains the CD. Follow the prompts and enter the Medicare password (PIC). After the final prompt, the process is complete and you can close the certificate manager.

8.	Reopen Access Anaesthetics, go to the Eclipse Menu, click Setup > Test > Test. This should then show your updated expiry date.

For group practices, the installation needs to be done only once.