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Medicare result routing, and a clearer name in the API

Medicare results can now route back to your organisation automatically. We've also added a dedicated role for ordering practitioners, and renamed the Medicare field in the API so it no longer implies something we can't promise.

Result routing​

When a doctor orders under their own provider number, the collecting laboratory sends results to whatever destination that provider number is registered against — which historically wasn't us. That meant Medicare results didn't reliably come back into BGT.

Settings → Result routing fixes that. Notify each pathology laboratory once that a practitioner is now ordering through BGT, and their Medicare results route back into the right organisation from then on.

  • A live status board. See each laboratory's state — not set up, awaiting confirmation, connected, or needs attention — for every provider number in your organisation.
  • Your details, disclosed only with your consent. Notifying a laboratory discloses the practitioner's own details, so it has to come from their account. Owners and administrators can see the board, but can't notify on someone else's behalf.
  • Stop any time, per laboratory. Ask us to stop routing at a single lab without affecting the others. We confirm with the lab and record their reply before marking it stopped.
  • Advisory, never blocking. Routing is never a prerequisite for ordering. Place the order whenever you like; we simply tell you whether the results will find their way back automatically, and from which labs.

Ordering under Medicare is now its own permission​

Who may order under a provider number is now something you grant explicitly. Create a role with the Order with Medicare provider number capability and assign it to the doctors who should have it — on its own, or alongside their existing role.

It's deliberately excluded from Admin: administrators manage the practice address and every practitioner's provider details, while only the ordering doctor can apply their own signature and place orders under their number. See Roles & Permissions.

For API integrations: ordering under Medicare​

POST /v1/referrals takes medicareTests — the tests to order under Medicare using the practitioner's provider number — and produces a separate Medicare referral alongside any commercial one. Every referral response carries a medicare boolean saying which it is.

The naming is deliberate: ordering a test under Medicare is something we control; whether the patient ultimately pays nothing is decided by the collecting laboratory and the patient's Medicare eligibility, and a gap or full fee may still apply. Don't present these tests to your customers as guaranteed to be free.

Medicare referrals created through the API also return a new routingMessage — a plain-language summary of whether, and from which labs, that practitioner's results will route back automatically. It's advisory only and never blocks the order.

See the REST API reference and the API changelog for the field-level detail, or Medicare Ordering for the full walkthrough.

Questions? Reach out to our team at support@bloodygoodtests.com.au.