Administered by Honeysuckle Health, the NIB Clinical Partners program allows participating orthopaedic surgeons and anaesthetists to charge a loading for hip and knee joint replacements without the patient incurring an out of pocket expense.
The loading applies when the surgical items are
Hips - 49318, 49319, 49321
Knees - 49518, 49519, 49521
Invoices should be prepared at the usual MediGap rate, then an additional item should be added
"ANAES - Single joint anaesthetics payment"
or
"BILAT - Bilateral joint anaesthetics payment"
You may want to add these descriptions and fees as user items for easy reference, under Databases > User Items
As the rates vary from time to time, you will need to update your user items manually.
From 1 August 2023 the rates are $625 and $885 respectively.
At present it's not possible to send Clinical Partner Agreement accounts via ECLIPSE. Instead of sending the invoice to the patient for gap charges, provider should send the invoice to
clinical.partners@honeysucklehealth.com.au