If your clinic is already accredited under the ‘Medisave for CDMP’ framework, then you do not need to re-register for ‘Medisave for CDMP’. Please click here to register for CHAS. The assigned polyclinic administrator will follow-up directly with you to sign the CHAS contract.

You can jointly register your clinic for CDMP and CHAS accreditation. Please click here for joint registration.

To participate in CDMP, and thus also for CHAS, doctors providing treatment need to be accredited under the Medisave scheme by MOH. Doctors who are already accredited under the Medisave scheme do not need to register separately for CHAS, if their Medisave accreditation is still valid. 

Medisave accreditation for doctors is renewed every two years. MOH will send you a reminder letter when your Medisave accreditation is due for renewal.

Doctors who are not yet Medisave accredited or who need to renew their Medisave accreditation, please click here .

(Contd) such as applying for GIRO with CPF Board/NCS and purchasing the token card etc.?

Although you may not expect to use Medisave for CHAS patients, your patient may be able to use the Medisave accounts of his immediate family members to help pay for his treatment. To avoid delays in such cases, clinics are encouraged to complete all the setup and paperwork for the submission of Medisave claims to enable you to make Medisave claims for both your CHAS and non-CHAS patients.

The clinic training requirement for Medisave CDMP accreditation is now conducted through e-learning. Users can complete the accreditation at their own convenience. There will be no more classroom training for Medisave accreditation.  

To register for e-learning, please click here.You may also wish to apply for training exemption via this link. The registration will take approximately 2-3 working days to process. Thereafter, you will receive an email notification with e-learning login details. Please note that if your clinic is currently not Medisave-accredited, you will need to first submit an application for accredition before registering for e-learning.   

Patients who hold a valid CHAS, Pioneer Generation (PG) or Public Assistance (PA) card are eligible to receive subsidies for treatment of conditions covered under CHAS. For patients with the Public Assistance (PA) card, there will not be any patient payable amount, and the cost of the bill will be reimbursed in full to the clinic.

Merdeka Generation seniors will receive special CHAS subsidies at CHAS clinics from 1 November 2019.

For visits on/after 1 January 2017, you and your patient no longer need to sign the PCF. This is because your patient will be deemed to have given their consent for your clinic to disclose their information with the Ministry of Health and its authorised agents, when they use the Health Assist or Pioneer Generation card at your clinic.

For your existing signed PCFs, please retain them for at least 6 years from the time they were signed, as per the 2015 National Guidelines for Retention Periods of Medical Records. Original paper records may be destroyed upon digitisation of medical records, as long as the copies are accurate and satisfy the legal requirements for admission as seconday evidence in court.

(Contd) Can a patient be re-categorised from simple chronic to complex chronic and vice versa? How should this be reflected?

Please refer to the table below for the clinical definitions of how to classify patients into the correct tier.

Table: Patient Classification According to Disease Severity  

This assessment should be done during each patient visit. The claim made for the visit should reflect the tier assigned, based on the GP’s assessment of the patient’s condition for that visit.

If during the course of managing the patient’s chronic condition(s), the patient develops complications or his/her condition improves, the patient should be re-classified to complex chronic or simple chronic accordingly. Clinical data submitted for the patient should match the tier assigned. For example, if the patient is diagnosed as having diabetes and hypertension, clinical data should be submitted for both conditions as per CDMP requirements.

Conditions covered under CHAS Acute can be claimed as part of a CHAS Chronic claim only when the patient consults the doctor on both CHAS Acute and CHAS Chronic conditions during the same visit. For such CHAS Chronic claims, the CHAS Acute claim cannot exceed the maximum CHAS Acute subsidy (i.e. $18.50 for CHAS Blue and $28.50 for PG) that the patient would have been eligible for if a separate visit/claim had been made for the CHAS Acute condition(s). 

It is generally not expected that a patient would need to make more than 1 visit a day or more than 4 visits per month to the clinic. Clinics are also not allowed to make more than one acute or one chronic claim on the same day for the same patient.

From 2020, MOH will be instituting a limit on the number of visits for common illnesses allowed under CHAS to be 24 per year per patient, across all CHAS clinics. We have assessed that it is not expected that more than 24 visits per year would be required for common illnesses. This guideline has been put in place to limit potential abuse of subsidies and to ensure that patients with multiple, frequent visits and might potentially require specialist or hospital care are reviewed in the appropriate setting in a timely manner.

(Contd) records to continue their care?

Patients will need to obtain a memo from their previous polyclinic doctor so that you may provide the continuity of care. Alternatively, medical history will have to be obtained from the patients.

Clinical data submission is a key component of the CDMP framework, which is important to MOH as it allows for the evaluation of clinical outcomes with the goal of improving overall health of the population. For individual GPs, clinical data submission is equally important as a clinical quality improvement tool for self-evaluation. For a more detailed discussion of clinical data submission requirements and benefits, please refer to the latest Handbook for Healthcare Professionals 2018. 

For those clinics using the CMS platform, submission of clinical data for your CHAS patients can be done directly within CMS itself using the same method as for CDMP submissions. For clinics doing web-based submission of claims, the submission of clinical data should be done via the MOH Healthcare Claims Portal(MHCP). 

(cont'd) must I submit two sets of clinical indicators on MediClaim as well as MHCP?

For such patients you would only need to submit clinical data either via the MOH Healthcare Claims Portal (MHCP) or CMS. The same set of clinical data does not need to be re-entered on MediClaim as it will be integrated backend at the database level.

(Contd) Is the tier classification for the purposes of determining the annual subsidy cap the same as the classification for each visit?

The assignment of simple chronic or complex chronic classification is done via the CHAS claims process. Each visit claim should include a tier classification for the patient. Based on the history of assigned tiers for past claims, the system will set the annual subsidy cap that will apply for the calendar year accordingly. Regardless of the annual subsidy cap that is in place for the patient, GPs should assign the appropriate tier classification to the patient at each visit based on their diagnosis of the patient’s condition at that point in time, as the clinical data submitted would need to match the tier classification assigned.

(Contd) However, I was subsequently informed that the claims were unsuccessful, as the CHAS annual subsidy cap for patients had been exceeded. Why did this happen?

This could happen if there is a lag between the time you checked the balance and when you submitted your claim. In the interim, additional claims could have been made that used up the annual subsidy balance.

For example:

Since the claim for Visit 4 was only submitted on 30 Nov, the balance was used up by the claim submitted for Visit 5 in between the time the balance was checked and when the claim for Visit 4 was submitted.

You will be reimbursed within 1 month from the receipt of your claim if there are no queries. If there are queries relating to your claim, payment will be made to you within 7 days after the resolution of all such queries.

Itemised bills will help your patient better understand the charges for the services and medication received, and know how much CHAS subsidy the clinic is claiming for him/her.

From 1 January 2017, all CHAS clinics are required to issue an itemised bill to all CHAS (including PG and Public Assistance) patients. This includes patients whose charges are covered fully by CHAS subsidies and do not make any out-of-pocket payment. The itemised bill must at least state the following:  

• the total charges before CHAS subsidy (with a breakdown into Consultation, Medication, Investigation and Others);  
• the total CHAS subsidy given; and  
• the remaining amount that the patient pays.

Please note that if your clinic already issues bills that are more detailed, you do not need to make any changes to your bill format.  

Minimun level of bill itemisation required:   

You may contact your clinic’s AIC account manager to seek any clarification or help if needed. 

The referral is not limited to the conditions that are covered by CHAS. For example, you can refer a CHAS patient to the SOC for suspected cancer and this would still be considered a subsidised referral. However, the subsidised referral must be made to the SOC and not directly to the laboratory, to ensure that the test ordered is necessary for the patient’s condition.

The polyclinic administrators may conduct operational and clinical audits on your clinic to check for compliance with the CHAS guidelines. The following table summarises the areas of compliance that may be audited:-