Find appointments with your nurses where a 10987 may have been performed but not billed
This metric is available to our Best Practice software and MedicalDirector integration customers.
This metric can assist in finding appointments that were booked with your nurse team where a 10987 may have been performed but not billed.
Eligibility for item 10987 is based on the historical billing of item 715 and any Telehealth, Telephone, or non-VR equivalents. Patients who have been billed ten item 10987s in the current calendar year are not considered eligible for further billing opportunities of item 10987s in the same calendar year. Always consult the providing Practitioner about billing decisions and ensure the relevant service or appointment meets MBS/DVA guidelines.
To navigate to this metric, go to Clinic Optimisation > Billing Optimisation > Historical opportunities tab > Historical 10987 opportunities
MBS Item 10987 allows Indigenous people who have received any MBS health assessment item to access Medicare rebates for follow-up services provided by a practice nurse or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioner. A maximum of 10 services per patient is available in a calendar year.
Please refer to MBS online for item number clarification: Medicare benefits schedule item 10987.
The sections included in this article are:
- Historical potential opportunities by Nurse
- 10987 completion rate
- Trend of historical 10987 opportunities
- List of historical 10987 opportunities
NOTE: A time limit of two years currently applies to the lodgement of claims with Medicare under the direct billing (assignment of benefit) arrangements. This means that currently, Medicare benefits are not payable for any service where the service was rendered more than two years earlier than the date the claim was lodged with Medicare.
Click here and here to find further information about it.
It has recently been announced that this claiming period will be reduced to 12 months from November 2025. Read more about it here."
Deceased and inactive patients are not included in this metric. Should you wish to review any of those patients, please tick the checkbox in the filters:
Historical potential opportunities by Nurse
This figure is the number of nurse appointments that were with patients who were potentially eligible for an item 10987 but no item 10987 was billed with the same service date, broken down by Practitioner.
TOP TIP! Create an appointment book column in Best Practice for each member of your Nurse team, so you can easily track how many patients your nursing team is seeing each day.
10987 Completion rate
This figure shows how your completion rate compares to past years.
NOTE: The current calendar year completion rate for 10987 can be found in Clinic optimisation > Item optimisation > Item 10987
Trend of historical potential 10987 opportunities
This figure is the trend of nurse appointments that were with patients who were potentially eligible for an item 10987 but no item 10987 was billed with the same service date.
TOP TIP! This page defaults to show you patients also eligible for 10997, simply tick the box below if you would like to remove those patients from your list. 
List of historical potential 10987 opportunities
This table shows the details of the nurse appointments that were with patients who were potentially eligible for item 10987 but no item 10987 was billed with the same service date.
This list allows you to see the appointment date and time, patient details, appointment type, Nurse seen, how many 10998s were billed that calendar year, item numbers billed for that patient on that service date, which doctor they were seeing that day and the patient's Usual Doctor.
Use this list to audit your patient files to identify where a 10987 was performed but not billed.
TOP TIP! Create an appointment type specifically for 10987, so nurses can book patients into their appointment book using this appointment type. This will make it easy to search and find any potential missed billings by using the filter 'Select Appt Type' at the top of the page to refine the list to those appointments booked as '10987' only.