Category 1 - PROFESSIONAL ATTENDANCES
AN.0.79
Patient end support (PES) items for GPs, Prescribed Medical Practitioners (PMP) and Nurse practitioners (NP)
These notes provide information on the MBS attendance items for health professionals to provide clinical support to their patients during video consultations with a Specialist or Consultant Physician.
From 1 March 2026 the following PES services are available:
| Providers | Group | Subgroup | Items |
| General Practitioner (GP) | Group A48—General practitioner attendances—telehealth related | Subgroup 1—General practitioner patient end support for video conferencing consultations with specialists or consultant physicians | 2484, 2485, 2486, 2487, 2488, 2489, 2490, 2491, 2492, 2493, 2494, 2495 |
| Prescribed Medical Practitioner (PMP) | Group A7—Acupuncture and non‑specialist practitioner items |
Subgroup 13—Prescribed medical practitioner patient end support for video conferencing consultations with specialists or consultant physicians | 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 390, 391 |
| Nurse Practitioner (NP) | Group M14 – Nurse practitioners |
Subgroup 5—Participating nurse practitioner patient end support for video conferencing consultations with specialists or consultant physicians | 82250, 82251, 82252, 82253, 82254, 82255, 82256, 82257 |
A PES service is a professional face to face attendance that supports a multi-disciplinary approach. They are designed for a patient’s primary care provider to support them to attend and participate in a video conference consultation with a Specialist or Consultant Physician.
PES services are available nationally and can be conducted in consulting rooms, out of consulting rooms, and in residential aged care facilities. The items are specific to these locations and providers are expected to use the appropriate items for the type of service that is being applied.
These services can only be conducted where the Specialist or Consultant Physician is working in private practice and has also billed the service to the MBS.
Clinical indications
The Specialist or Consultant Physician must be satisfied that it is clinically appropriate to provide a video consultation to a patient. The decision to provide clinically relevant support to the patient is the responsibility of the Specialist or Consultant Physician.
Video specialist services can still be provided to patients when there is no PES service provided.
Restrictions
The MBS video attendance items are not payable for services to an admitted hospital patient (this includes ‘Hospital in the Home’ patients).
Benefits for PES are payable only for real-time video consultations, and not payable for telephone consultations or contributions to reports.
To fulfill the item descriptor there must be a visual and audio link between the patient and the remote practitioner. If the remote practitioner is unable to establish both a visual and audio link with the patient, an MBS benefit for the PES attendance is not payable.
Record Keeping
Participating practitioners must keep contemporaneous notes of the consultation including documenting that the service was performed face-to-face simultaneously with a video conference from a Specialist or Consultant Physician, the date, time and the people who participated.
Only clinical details recorded at the time of the attendance count towards the time of the consultation. It does not include information added at a later time, such as reports of investigations.
Multiple attendances on the same day
In some situations, a patient may receive a video consultation and a face-to-face consultation by the same or different practitioner on the same day.
Medicare benefits may be paid for more than one consultation on a patient on the same day by the same practitioner, provided the second (and any following) consultations are not a continuation of the initial or earlier consultations. Practitioners will need to provide the times of each consultation on the patient's account or bulk billing voucher.
Aftercare Rule
The video consultation portion of this service is subject to the same aftercare rules as face-to-face consultations.
Referrals
PES is available for a referred private Specialist or Consultant Physician video consultation. The referral procedure for the video consultation with the Specialist or Physician Consultant is the same as for conventional face-to-face consultations.
Individual clinicians must be confident that the technology used is able to satisfy the item descriptor and that software and hardware used to deliver a video conference meets the applicable laws for security and privacy.
Duration of attendance
The practitioner attending at the patient end of the video consultation must be present for the entire consultation.
The MBS fee payable for the supporting practitioner will be determined by the total time spent assisting the patient. This time is not restricted to the time the Specialist or Consultant Physician spends on the call, but how long the patient end provider continues the consultation with the patient to complete what was discussed.
Legend
- Assist - Addition/Deletion of (Assist.)
- Amend - Amended Description
- Anaes - Anaesthetic Values Amended
- Emsn - EMSN Change
- Fee - Fee Amended
- Renum - Item Number Change (renumbered)
- New - New Item
- NewMin - New Item (previous Ministerial Determination)
- Qfe - QFE Change