Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescribers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners can register a patient through Health Professional Online Services (HPOS). Prescribers can read about writing a CTG prescription.
Patients can’t register themselves for the CTG PBS co-payment.
You can register patients if you’re either:
- a PBS prescriber
- an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander health practitioner registered with both the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) and Medicare.
Or, once you assess a patient is eligible, your Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) delegate can register them.
If you’re not registered with us yet, read more about starting with Medicare. If you’re registered with us, you can register with Ahpra on the Ahpra website.
You only need to assess your patient’s eligibility once.
Your patient is eligible if all the following apply:
- They self-identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian.
- They’ll have setbacks in preventing or managing their condition if they don’t take the medicine.
- They’re unlikely to keep up their treatment without help with the cost.
- They’re enrolled with Medicare.
You only need to register your patient in the CTG PBS co-payment register once. They don’t need to register again if they move to a different health clinic.
You can register your patient through HPOS with a Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account. If you don’t have one, register for a PRODA account. Then follow the steps to set up your HPOS access.
To register your eligible patient, follow these steps:
- Discuss the CTG PBS co-payment with your patient and get their consent to register them.
- Log in to PRODA to use HPOS.
- Select My programs and Closing the Gap PBS Co-Payment register.
Search for your patient using their details.
Patients already registered for CTG will display an active status.
Unregistered patients will display an inactive status, and display the register button.
Select the button to register them. Once the system has been updated they can get their medicine at the reduced rate.
Patient privacy is important to us. Your patient can read more about their right to privacy.
If you’ve registered your patient in error, you’ll need to call us to withdraw them.
If your patient asks to be withdrawn, they’ll need to call us on PBS general enquiries to withdraw.
Patient privacy is important to us. Your patient can read more about their right to privacy.
There are 3 steps to follow when writing a CTG prescription:
- Check the prescription is for an eligible medicine on the PBS website. Eligible medicines include Section 85 and Section 100 (National Health Act 1953) PBS medicines.
- Use HPOS to check your patient is registered for CTG.
- Annotate the prescription to help pharmacists.
There are 2 ways to annotate the prescription. You can handwrite the letters ‘CTG’ with your initials or signature, or your prescribing software can annotate it with an alpha-numeric code. For example, CTG00B.
Annotation isn’t a legal requirement. But it helps pharmacists dispensing the medicine.
Section 94 approved private hospital pharmacies can dispense CTG prescriptions. From 1 January 2025, public hospital pharmacies can also dispense CTG prescriptions.
To learn more about CTG, complete the CTG module on the Health Professional Education Resources (HPE) website.