The current Medicare Online certificates are set to expire on 13 March 2022, however, these do not need to be updated before upgrading to Genie v9.4.6, which will connect your practice with Medicare Web Services. You will need to update your Genie software before 13 March 2022 to continue claiming with Medicare.
Every few years Medicare issues new global certificates for online claiming which are needed to be updated in Genie by a user. This process can be done from a Genie Client, but it is important that no one is using Medicare Online (including Online Verification) on other computers while the steps are completed. If they are, you may run into problems transacting with Medicare Online in future.
Please note that this process will not update your Medicare Location certificates, which are unique to your practice. If you require assistance with this type of certificate, please refer to this article Updating PKI Location Certificates, or contact Genie Support for further assistance.
Updating Medicare certificates
To update your Medicare Online certificates, follow these steps:
- Ensure no staff are using Medicare Online
- Navigate to File > Maintenance & Reports > Administrator tab and click the HIC Online PSI Store option
- Double-click on GENxxxxx to open your store
- Click the Update HIC Certs button and let it run, confirming you receive a Certificates Updated Successfully message
- Click Save to close out of the PSI Store window
- Restart Genie on this machine, and ask all other users to restart Genie
- Confirm Medicare Online functionality still works successfully on all machines
Manually updating Medicare certificates
If you encounter an error when performing the above steps advising you cannot connect to Genie Solutions, this may be related to a proxy or firewall setting. If this is the case you may need to manually update your certificates to workaround these security restrictions by downloading a copy of the required files via a link instead of within the program. Instructions for doing so are below.
To download the certificates:
- Download the certificates by right-clicking on this link > Save As > and save in the format gfa. This will download the certificates in the proprietary 'Genie Format Archive' format.
- In Genie, navigate to File > Maintenance & Reports > Administrator tab.
- Hold down Alt/Option and click on Upload HIC Online Log Files.
- Navigate to the saved location of the gfa file on your computer.
- Click 'Open' to extract the files. You should be left with two files - one labelled MCA_Sign and one MCA_Encrypt.
To import the certificates:
- Ensure no staff are using Medicare Online
- In Genie, navigate to File > Maintenance & Reports > Administrator tab > HIC Online PSI Store.
- Double-click on your PSI store.
- Hold down and ALT/Option and click on the 'Update HIC Certs' button.
- Browse to the location of the MCA_Sign and MCA_Encrypt files extracted in the above section.
- Once the files are selected, the 'OK' button will be activated.
- Ensure you receive a prompt confirming your certificates are updated successfully.
- Click Save to close out of the PSI Store window
- Restart Genie on this machine, and ask all other users to restart Genie
- Confirm Medicare Online functionality still works successfully on all machines