You can feel when a policy isn’t built for people. It’s clean on paper, messy on the ground. We tried to tell you, Mr Butler.
This Saturday, 1 November, new Medicare reforms come into effect.
Specifically, Medicare Benefits Schedule telehealth eligibility criteria will be introduced for MBS nurse practitioner services. The eligibility criteria are similar to those for MBS GP telehealth consultations.
Nurse practitioners will be required to have an established clinical relationship with their patient, or the service must be subject to an exemption, for telehealth (video and phone) to be eligible for an MBS benefit.
These changes are meant to improve access to primary care. But access for who?
While headlines talk about “choice” and “continuity,” one corporate chain, ForHealth, reportedly runs 87 of 137 federally funded urgent care clinics.
That’s close to $889 million in government funds over seven years, directed to a single group. By the way, I’m very happy to be corrected in these details – I actually hope that I’m wrong.
Meanwhile, nurse practitioners keeping care alive in rural and remote communities will be excluded from the same telehealth funding models that every other profession under Medicare has.
We’re told it’s about “eligibility”. But what it is really about is MyMedicare architecture.
A system built around a single type of provider will always serve the system before it serves the people in it. And when that system shuts out nurse practitioners, it doesn’t just create a gap – it creates a vacuum.
It’s a vacuum that only corporates have the scale and structure to fill. (Hey Eucalyptus! I’ve been watching your recent hiring blitz with great interest!)
That’s how dependence is built. Quietly. Structurally. With rules that look neutral on paper.
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Government policy cannot keep mistaking corporate infrastructure for community access.
Because here’s the truth: when nurse practitioners are written out, so are the patients (read: Australians) who rely on them.
So as the 1 November telehealth changes roll out, watch who they serve first. Watch who gets the funding, the clinics, the spotlight.
And then ask – who is left waiting? Who is hurt. Whose hospital system can’t handle the fallout?
We tried to tell you, Mr Butler.
Laura Zimmerman is a nurse practitioner, and CEO/founder of Wattle and River Home Health, an aged and community care service provider based in Goondiwindi in Queensland.
This article was first published on her LinkedIn feed. Read the original here.
