Bp Premier Spectra SP1 Revision 3 includes updates for some big changes for Medicare Bulk Billing that kick off November 01 2025:
- Bulk Billing Incentive Eligibility Expansion
- Bulk Billing PIP
- Mental Health Care Plans
As well as the November 01 billing changes, Revision 3 includes updates for long acting reversible contraceptive billing, emailing Correspondence In documents from patient record, and new code pairing functionality for third-party integrations who are moving to the Halo Connect API by end 2025, increasing cybersecurity for your practice and our partners.
Best Practice Software are running a series of Masterclass webinars to walk our practices through these changes, and the updates in Bp Premier to help you manage these government programs.
There are a range of sessions available, with the first starting this Friday, 26th Sep. Click here to browse our Revision 3 Masterclass registration page and select the session that best suits you!
Let’s look at the November 01 changes first!
Incentive eligibility scope is the first of two programs aimed to increase bulk billing remuneration for general practitioners and incentivize practices to bulk bill Australian patients in 2025.
Currently, bulk billing incentive payments (the single and triple BBI items) are only available to children under 16 years of age, and patients with a Commonwealth Concession card. From November 01, these incentive items will be available when billing all Medicare-eligible patients.
Apart from upgrading, practices do not need to action anything to take advantage of the eligibility expansion for bulk billing incentives. Claiming logic has been updated in Bp Premier Spectra SP1 Revision 3 to apply the new eligibility rules automatically.
The Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program (BBPIP), beginning November 01 2025, supports practices to move to 100% bulk billing. Practices must register with BBPIP in HPOS, must be registered with MyMedicare, and must bulk bill all eligible services to receive a 12.5% incentive on every $1 bulk billed, assessed and paid quarterly, split 50/50 between the practice and all providers.
In a bid to further incentivise practices, the Government has also launched a calculator that provides practice managers and GPs with income estimates based on their consultation mix, current billing model, location, and concessional patient proportion. This is to support decision-making by comparing different scenarios.
The BBPIP payment is on top of any existing incentive payments, and is made to the practice and provider bank accounts recorded in the Provider and Organisation records in HPOS.
Commitment to BBPIP is a significant undertaking for the whole of practice, and requires all doctors working at the practice to bulk bill all eligible services for a calendar quarter. Eligible services include non-referred attendance MBS items, and exclude procedural items and services normally billed privately, for example, wound care.
To assist BBPIP practices with tracking private billings over a quarter, a new management report is included in Revision 3. Refer to the Knowledge Base Resource for Bp Premier users for more information.
Practices taking part in BBPIP are also expected to:
- Advertise as fully bulk billing on the National Health Services Directory
- Indicate their participation as a bulk billing only clinic through regular signage.
More information on advertising as bulk billing only will be made available by the department closer to November 01, but to register your interest in the program or find more about bulk billing changes or the calculator, visit health.gov.au/BBPIP.
Covering both eligibility and BB PIP, the Department of Health, Disability, and Ageing has released a Frequently Asked Questions list for practices. Best Practice Software have also created a comprehensive question list for Bp Premier users, available from the Spectra Knowledge Base (or type ‘Bulk Billing PIP Bp Premier’ into a search engine).
Mental Health Treatment Plan Review and Consultation item numbers for GPs will be removed from the MBS from November 01. Mental Health Plan Creation items will remain.
Providers will use the general attendance time-based items to reflect the length of a complex mental health consultation (for example, Level E items), rather than the obsolete items.
To align mental health care with chronic condition management changes, patients are strongly encouraged to receive treatment under Better Access by a GP at their MyMedicare-registered practice. Patients, however, can continue to see an alternate GP for mental health treatment if they have regularly been seeing that GP.
This means from November 01, you may wish to ask your prospective Better Access patients about MyMedicare registration, as introduced for chronic condition management patients.
New items and increased fees are being introduced from November 01 to improve access and affordability for long acting reversible contraception services (LARC), such as IUD insertion or removal.
The MBS fee will increase for four existing LARC items, while three new items will be created specifically for nurse practitioners performing LARC services. Two new 40% loading incentive items have also been created for GP and nurse practitioners.
Upgrade to Revision 3 to include all LARC item updates. The 40% loading item is manually added to the invoice if all LARC and co-claimed services are bulk-billed.
All Third Party Integrations and Partners will be making changes to the way they connect to your Bp Premier database and moving to the Halo Connect API by 31st December, 2025.
Almost all Partners will require you to provide a new Pairing Code from 1st February 2026, or as soon as an existing Partner implements the Pairing Code requirement in their software.
Pairing Codes are generated from the Setup Third Party Integrations function from Revision 3. However, you can download and install the utility from the Bp Premier Resources page if you are on an earlier version. The pairing code is unique to your practice; it is important that only practice administrators and the specific Partner know this code.
Email functionality continues to be extended in Revision 3. Correspondence In documents in a wide variety of formats can now be emailed directly to patient from the patient record as a PIN-secured PDF.
From Correspondence In, choose Email Copy to Patient from the toolbar. The address will default to the patient’s email in Demographics. Patients will also need a Clinical Communications option selected as part of Bp Comms Consent to receive correspondence by email.
The PIN is automatically generated by Bp Premier and cannot be changed. The PIN should be sent to the patient separately. A Contact Note is also created for successful emails of correspondence documents.
Revision 3 contains updates for significant new programs and changes to MBS fees and bulk billing in 2025. Best Practice Software strongly recommend you upgrade to Revision 3 as soon as practicable before November to help prepare your practice for these changes
The Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program requires additional actions and configuration for participating practices. If you aim to be a BB PIP practice, you need to familiarize yourself with the resources made available by the government, including instructions on how to:
- Advertise your practice on the National Health Services Provider Directory and elsewhere
- Register your practice for BBPIP.
Best Practice Software is always available to help your practice through these changes. The Spectra Knowledge Base contains several resources on all changes in Revision 3:
- Spectra Knowledge Base Bulk Billing Changes Resources page
- Spectra Knowledge Base Revision 3 FAQ page
- Spectra Knowledge Base Mental Health Treatment Plan updates page
For all our Cubiko users out there, you can also join Chris Smeed, Kelly Chard (GrowthMD) and Dr. Ramya Raman (RACGP) for their upcoming webinar, “Should we enrol? Making sense of the new incentives” on the 25th of September at 12pm AEST as they cover off how the new incentive structure works, what the numbers could mean for your bottom line and how to apply a clear framework when deciding whether to participate. Click here to register. Cubiko also have a suite of useful resources including a 2025 Medicare Incentive Toolkit, so make sure you check that out!
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