Psychiatric attendance — duration-tier follow-up (telehealth)

Telehealth professional attendance by a consultant psychiatrist following referral, time-banded by duration. Eight items differ by modality (video 91827–91831 vs phone 91837–91839) and duration tier. The video items approximately match the in-person 300/302/304/306/308 duration tiers, with one important difference in boundary wording: the telehealth items use 'at least X minutes' for tiers 91828/91829/91830/91831 (and 91838/91839 for phone), whereas the in-person items use 'more than X minutes' for tiers 302/304/306/308. This means a consultation of exactly 15.0 / 30.0 / 45.0 / 75.0 minutes maps to a different item across the two modalities — the in-person item belongs to the lower tier, the telehealth item belongs to the upper tier. Practitioners delivering attendances at boundary minutes should claim the item whose modality and exact descriptor wording matches their consultation. All items share a 50-attendances-per-calendar-year combined cap across 296/297/299/300/302/304/306/308 + 91827–91831 + 91837–91839 + 92437. The time band documented must match the item claimed.

Plain-English summary. See MBS Online for the verbatim descriptor of each item.

Which item should I bill?

All variants share the same documentation requirements (below). The item number you bill is determined by the actual face-to-face duration and the location.

Item	Time	Location	Typical use	MBS Online
91827	Not more than 15 minutes	Video telehealth	Brief video medication-only review.	Open
91828	At least 15 minutes and not more than 30 minutes	Video telehealth	Standard video follow-up.	Open
91829	At least 30 minutes and not more than 45 minutes	Video telehealth	Longer video follow-up — medication change or focused review.	Open
91830	At least 45 minutes and not more than 75 minutes	Video telehealth	Extended video follow-up — complex review or psychotherapy block.	Open
91831	At least 75 minutes	Video telehealth	Very long video review — typically a psychotherapy session.	Open
91837	Not more than 15 minutes	Phone telehealth	Brief phone medication-only review where video is not clinically appropriate.	Open
91838	At least 15 minutes and not more than 30 minutes	Phone telehealth	Standard phone follow-up where video is not clinically appropriate.	Open
91839	At least 30 minutes and not more than 45 minutes	Phone telehealth	Longer phone follow-up where video is not clinically appropriate.	Open

Requirements to bill

Conditions imposed by the descriptor that must be met to claim any item in this family.

1Current referral from a medical practitioner in general practice, a participating nurse practitioner, a specialist, or another consultant physician.
2For video items (91827–91831): a clinically appropriate audio + visual link must be used.
3For phone items (91837–91839): the practitioner must consider phone clinically appropriate for the consultation and document why video was not used (longer phone attendances above 45 minutes are not available — those must be video).
4Where the patient has not been seen by this psychiatrist in the preceding 24 months, the new-patient items (296/297/299 in-person or 92437 video) apply instead of this family.
5Combined annual cap — across this family and 296/297/299/300/302/304/306/308 and 92437, the patient must not have exceeded 50 attendances in the calendar year.
6Item billed must match the time band actually delivered.

Your notes must show

Documentation tests — what clinical notes need to demonstrate to survive a PSR audit, regardless of which variant you bill.

Date, start time, end time, and total duration — must match the time band of the item claimed.
Modality (video or phone) — must match the item claimed; note any technical issues that affected the consultation.
For phone items: a clinical note explaining why phone was used rather than video (e.g. patient lacked video capability, video failed mid-consultation, patient preference and clinically appropriate).
Referral details — referrer name and profession, referral date, and validity period.
Continuity — reference to the previous attendance (date, item, key issues), confirming this is a follow-up rather than a new-patient consultation.
Patient self-report — symptoms, functional changes, medication adherence and tolerability, life events, treatment engagement.
Mental state examination — focused update, with explicit notation of any limitations imposed by the telehealth modality (especially for phone, where appearance and behaviour cannot be observed).
Risk update — current risk level, any new risk factors, any safety-plan deployment, and how the practitioner verified safety in a telehealth context.
Investigations referenced or ordered, with results where available.
Treatment-plan changes — medication adjustments with reasoning, psychotherapy adjustments, investigations ordered.
Communication plan — letter to referrer where indicated (medication initiation/change, change in diagnosis, change in risk).
Review interval — when the next consultation is scheduled and which item is anticipated.

Common audit failures

Patterns the Professional Services Review scheme and Medicare audits flag.

Time-band mismatch — note records a duration that does not match the item billed (e.g. 91829 claimed for a 28-minute video attendance that should be 91828). The single most common PSR finding for psychiatry telehealth.
Modality mismatch — phone item billed for a video attendance, or video item billed for a phone-only attendance.
Phone item billed without clinical justification for not using video.
Annual cap breach — claiming beyond 50 attendances per calendar year combined across the in-person family, this telehealth family, and 92437.
Wrong family — billing 91827–91831 / 91837–91839 for a patient who has not been seen in the preceding 24 months (296/297/299 or 92437 apply instead).
No MSE adaptation — copy-pasting an in-person MSE template without acknowledging what the telehealth modality changed (especially for phone).
No risk assessment in shorter attendances.

Related MBS items

Level B GP consultation

Level C GP consultation

Level D GP consultation

291

Psychiatrist assessment and management plan

296–299

Psychiatrist new-patient comprehensive consultation

300–308

Psychiatric attendance — duration-tier follow-up

92437

Psychiatrist new-patient comprehensive consultation — video telehealth

Templates that document these items

Note templates inside Grounded Scribe that produce documentation aligned to these MBS items.

Psychiatry Ongoing Consultation (300-308)

Ongoing psychiatric review consultation, billed by duration across MBS items 300–308. Captures interval history, MSE, response to medication and/or psychotherapy, risk re-assessment, and updated management. Suitable for routine reviews, medication titration, and shared-care updates back to the GP.

In-depth reading in the Library

Mental Health Tribunal and Medico-Legal Report Writing: What Psychiatrists Need to Document

Psychiatrists regularly prepare reports for Mental Health Tribunals, courts, WorkCover, and insurers. This guide covers the anatomy of a defensible medico-legal report, state Mental Health Act requirements, and how structured dictation can reduce report-writing time.

Documenting Medication Changes During Psychiatric Reviews: A Structured Approach

Medication management is the backbone of psychiatric practice, yet many psychiatrists lack a consistent framework for documenting changes. This guide provides a structured approach to recording medication decisions, clinical reasoning, and monitoring plans during psychiatric reviews.

Psychiatric Consultation MBS Documentation: A Practitioner Guide

Australian psychiatrists bill from three groups of MBS attendance items: 291 (assessment-and-management-plan), the 296/297/299 new-patient comprehensive-consultation family, and the 300/302/304/306/308 duration-tier follow-up family. Each group has distinct schedule rules — 291 carries a mandatory management-plan letter and a 12-month limit; 296/297/299 require no attendance from this psychiatrist in the preceding 24 months; the 300-series shares a 50-attendances-per-calendar-year combined cap. This guide walks through documentation tests for each.

Source authority

Documentation tests on this page reference the descriptor conditions and PSR-audit patterns covered in our existing Library guides. Always confirm current rules against the official descriptor.