To support our members and your practice, we’re temporarily authorising specialists and practitioners to carry out remote consultations during this phase of the illness COVID-19.
We ask that you follow these principles. Please:
Consultations
- Offer remote consulting if you feel this is clinically appropriate for your specialism and for the patient in question.
- Consult by telephone or video, keeping full clinical notes as you would for a normal consultation. Please seek your patient’s consent to either telephone or video consulting, and their permission for any recording you wish to make. Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) providers are responsible for data they collect via audio or video recording.
- Ensure there are no additional steps in the patient path.
- If you can no longer carry out in-person consultations at your normal facility, please note that we’ll authorise in-person consultations at a suitable alternative facility, even if out of network.
Records and billing
- Specialists: email your patient with the summary letter and all test results and copy these to the patient’s GP, with appropriate patient consent for email. Post may be used as a back-up option.
- Specialists and practitioners: bill AXA PPP healthcare at your agreed rate for consultation under the standard codes for 'new patient' or 'follow up'.
- Note that the portion of the consulting fee normally paid to the hospital or facility where you consult is a commercial arrangement between provider and facility.
Audit matters
- The remote consultation replaces an in-person consultation.
- The remote consultation should not be carried out in addition to an in-person consultation, unless a follow-up, in-person consultation is clinically appropriate.
- AXA PPP healthcare will monitor the use of remote consultations throughout this period.
This provision for remote consultation is a temporary measure. AXA PPP healthcare will review the situation by Monday, 1 June 2020 and may advise providers to return to in-person consultations on or before this date.
General principles
Please note that if a healthcare provider tests positive for the illness COVID-19 we can make no referrals to that provider until they are no longer an infection risk and able to accept patients back into their care.
We expect providers to inform us if they can no longer practise due to infection, and to arrange for continuing care.
Continuity of care
AXA PPP healthcare’s Operational Resilience department is preparing the business for the expected spread of the illness COVID-19. We aim to ensure we continue, where appropriate, to pre-authorise and arrange for the care and procedures you propose for our members.
We are:
- minimising travel between our offices (with a wide spread of offices across the UK we have a good level of built-in resilience)
- encouraging colleagues to work from home and to use conference and video calls where possible
- encouraging good hygiene practice in accordance with Public Health England and NHS advice
- consulting with the providers managing our diagnostic and other pathways to ensure their business is protected.
If COVID-19 forces a hospital closure, or where an individual healthcare provider tests positive for the disease, we will make no referrals to that hospital or provider until they are no longer an infection risk and able to accept patients back into their care.