Thinking about retirement?

If you are thinking about retirement and ceasing all forms of patient care, your ADA has some great resources to help you;

This article is about your professional responsibilities including your patient records, professional indemnity insurance and Ahpra registration. ADA SA recommends you consider a few simple steps to ensure you enjoy peace of mind and a trouble-free retirement.

Professional Indemnity insurance with Guild Insurance:   When you are ready to retire, contact Guild and let them know that you have ceased all forms of clinical practice/patient care and would like your insurance policy to be converted to a run off policy and practitioner cover ceased. Run off cover will provide, at no cost to you, continued coverage if a claim should arise in the future for your past dental work. During a claim, you will also have confidence that Meridian Lawyers will be there to support you. As one of the country’s leading professional liability defense teams, Meridian Lawyers have unparalleled experience in defending dental claims.

There is no cost for this policy change and you are no longer required to pay a premium. If you paid your Guild annual premium in full, you may be eligible for a partial refund.

If you are not ready to fully retire, but are considering reducing your working hours, taking a break from practice, or taking on a new form of practice activity (such as volunteering, locum work or performing non-clinical duties such as teaching or research), then you need to alert your insurance provider to ensure your cover remains tailored to your circumstances and responsive to your evolving needs.

Should you recommence practice, in any capacity, including temporarily as a locum, your run off policy will cease immediately and you’ll need to contact Guild to ensure you’re still adequately covered.  Dentists with professional indemnity and/or business insurance with Guild can contact the Guild customer care team on 1800 810 213. 

Dental Board  registration:  If you do not renew your registration with the Dental Board by 30 November of the year in which you retire (or the following one-month grace period), your registration will automatically lapse and your name will be removed from the register of practitioners. You cannot legally practice dentistry if you are not registered. 

You can alert Ahpra of your retirement sooner than the end of the calendar year.  However, Ahpra do not issue refunds for any unused registration dues ie: no refund will be owing to you.  For this reason, most practitioners who retire simply allow their registration to lapse. 

If you do not renew your registration, you will receive a letter from Ahpra after the late period confirming that your registration has lapsed. Your name will be removed from the public register and you will not be able to practise your profession in Australia. If you want to resume practice in the future, you will need to lodge a new application for registration.

If you wish to advise Ahpra of your retirement and request removal of your name from the register, you can use the following form: Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency - Web enquiry (ahpra.gov.au). Or you can log in to online services, select renew registration, click on ‘opt to not renew’, hit next and follow the prompts to confirm you're not renewing.

Depending on whether or not you are ready to fully retire, you may wish to consider whether it is necessary to maintain your Ahpra registration (for example, if you wish to continue to use protected title such as “dentist”).  The Dental Board has a web page to help you check if you need to register (https://www.dentalboard.gov.au/Registration/Check-if-you-need-to-register.aspx).

Medicare provider number/s:

What is a provider number? A Medicare provider number is a unique number comprising of:

• a 6-digit “stem” number that identifies you as an individual health care practitioner – for example: 123456 might mean “Dr Ima Dentist”
• an additional 2-digit alpha-numeric combination at the end which identifies your practice location – for example: 1A might mean “Suite 1, 1 Rundle St, Adelaide, 5000”

What is a provider number used for? Together, this 8-character combination identifies you as the treating clinician and indicates where the patient received treatment. Your provider number allows third party payment providers (Medicare, health funds) to make payments to you for treatment you provided for your patients – and, it links those benefit payments to an account which was nominated by you during your application.

What to do: CLOSE all location-specific provider numbers where you are no longer working by going online and closing in HPOS. Alternately, complete and submit the following form: Application for a Medicare provider number and, or prescriber number for allied health and non-medical health professionals form (HW093) - Services Australia.

**Why is it important? If you have ceased practice but remain registered, your provider number/s will remain open until either:

1. you close them, or
2. you are no longer registered.

If you do not close a provider number/s and it is used to submit claims to third party payment providers, you could find yourself facing debt recovery proceedings if those claims are subsequently deemed invalid by the payment provider (this is irrespective of whether or not you authorized the claim and whether you received all, part or none of the benefit entitlement).

What if I forget?   Medicare won’t close your provider number/s without the valid authorisation. However, from the time your registration lapses, you won’t be recognized as a provider and payments will no longer be issued.  The period of risk therefore lies between when you cease practice and when your provider number/s are closed (by you) or until you are no longer registered.

Prescriber number?

Your prescribing rights are linked to your registration.  This means you must maintain full registration (and fulfil continuing professional education and professional indemnity insurance requirements) to retain your prescribing rights. You cannot write prescriptions if you have non-practising registration or if you let your registration lapse. 

Once your Ahpra registration ceases, you will no longer be able to legally practice in Australia and Services Australia will automatically close your prescriber number. You should take care to ensure that all unused medications and prescription pads are disposed of securely.

Patient records:

When a dental practice closes, dentists or their legal personal representative must:

• take reasonable steps to notify patients in advance and facilitate the transfer of care for current patients to other practitioners (including the secure and consensual transfer of dental records of those patients); and
• make appropriate arrangements for the retention, storage or destruction of other patient records, including where possible provision to the patient or secure and consensual transfer to another dental practice.

Who owns the records and has the duty to store securely?

If you are a solo practitioner and simply close the business, the records will likely remain your property.  You will need to ensure your patient records are securely stored where they are protected from damage, loss or theft and can be retrieved easily if necessary.   In the case of a sale or transfer of the business, the entity that purchases, takes over or continues your practice will likely take ownership. In either situation, secure storage of the records ensures you have:

• complied with the privacy legislation which requires record retention for at least 7 years (adult patients) or until the patient turns 25 (patient who are minors at the time of treatment).
• provided for continuity of care or for clinical transfer to meet patients’ ongoing treatment needs (Code of Conduct obligation) and
• ability to access the records – for example, you may require access to your former patient records in order to respond to a patient notification, complaint or legal dispute.

**When negotiating the sale of the practice, you should ensure there is a clause to allow you to access records following retirement.

What are the regulations that govern the disposal of dental records? 

You must retain the health information of your patients in a secure manner until the time frames listed above expire. Thereafter, the health record can be destroyed in a secure manner.

**If/when you delete or dispose of health information, you must keep a record of the name of the individual to whom the health information related, the period covered by the record, and the date it was deleted or disposed of.

There are commercial operators who provide storage and destruction of document services. Certified storage and destruction companies should provide written notification when records are destroyed.

ADA membership: 

There are many ADA membership benefits for you to continue to enjoy following your retirement; including lunch club, networking, access to professional publications and courses plus lifestyle benefits such as discounts on travel and/or the purchase of a new car.

 These events and discounts are likely to be appealing to you in your retirement years.  Other ADA resources, such as access to the knowledgeable HR team, Peer and Advisory service may also be helpful.  To stay connected, please contact the ADA SA membership team on 8272 8111 to discuss the availability of discounted ADA membership rates.