Medicare Provider Number Application – PEP Specialist Pathway

What? – Medicare is Australia’s universal health insurance scheme.

Why? – Medicare workforce rules prescribe where IMGs are able to work as a General Practitioner in Australia. 

Why? – Medicare provides the bulk of income for you as a General Practitioner, so you will need to have a valid Medicare Provider Number.

On the PEP Specialist Pathway, after you have completed RACGP PartC, your Medicare Provider Number application will be lodged on your behalf by the RACGP.

While waiting for your Immigration to be completed, you can fill in, and sign, the Medicare Provider Number Form (HW019)  – ATTACHED HERE

The doctor needs to complete questions 1-15 and sign manually on the last page (please ask us your queries), we will make sure the remaining questions are filled in correctly.

Then, once you have received your Visa Confirmation, then you need to:

• • Complete Part C on the RACGP Portal, and
  • Email these documents to pepapprovedplacement@racgp.org.au  
    
    • Personal page of your passport
    • Visa confirmation – from Immigration)
    • Copy of your Current Medical Registration – from AHPRA
    • Letter of Support From Practice
    • Completed and signed Medicare Provider Number Form (HW019)

It can take around 2 – 4 weeks for RACGP Part C to be processed, and then RACGP submits the endorsed application to the Medicare Provider Number team on your behalf.

Then your final wait for the Medicare Provider Number processing begins.

From 24 hours after the email has been sent to the Medicare Provider Number team, we can call the phone number 132150 to confirm that they have received these documents, ask them to check and make sure they aren’t missing any documents, and also ask what their current number of processing days is.

At different times of the year, and with higher or lower workloads, this final process can take 30, 20, or perhaps 10 working days.

For planning purposes, until it speeds up, we would recommend that you allow 30 working days for processing.

Usually, in the final two weeks of waiting for the Medicare Provider Number, GPs on the PEP Specialist Pathway plan to arrive, visit their practice, meet their supervisor, and settle into other parts of their new life.

*Your practice may decide to speed the process up by additionally applying for a nonVR provider number.