The government should act now to reimburse GPs more appropriately for the longer consultations that are increasingly the bread and butter of their work. Plus Optus, and Baby Priya’s Law.
Federal health minister Mark Butler couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself as he stood to answer a Dorothy Dixer in parliamentary question time this week.
Still sporting his “Medicare green” tie, Mr Butler announced that “well over” a thousand GP clinics which were charging a gap last week were today bulk-billing “every patient that walks through that door” following the start of the new bulk-billing practice incentive scheme.
“That will grow every single day,” he said.
The minister may be chuffed, but even the federal AMA was tempering its general approval with a warning that more needed to be done to support general practice, saying “structural reform of Medicare rebates was desperately needed”.
“We continue to encourage the government to take the next step to increasing Medicare rebates for longer consultations to address the growing complexity of patient care,” said AMA vice-president Associate Professor Julian Rait.
“Patients have increasingly complex care needs, as Australia now has a much higher burden of chronic disease than when Medicare was first invented — therefore, greater investment in longer consultations is vital to keeping people healthy and out of hospital.”
Mr Butler, speaking at a press conference at an Adelaide GP clinic on Sunday, refused to commit to that move any time soon.
“We’ll keep working with the AMA about the structure of the Medicare benefits schedule,” he said.
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“We introduced a new long consult of over 60 minutes, which has been taken up very broadly. It’s quite an attractive payment. We calculated it carefully. It’s already been taken up very broadly for patients with quite complex needs, taken up much more by female GPs, and that was the message the AMA and the College of GPs were giving to us amongst a range of other reforms as well.
“I’ve been clear publicly, and with the AMA, this reform process to ensure the Medicare system reflects the needs of patients today rather than the sort of patients that doctors were getting in the ‘80s and ‘90s is an ongoing piece of work.
“But we were unapologetic about the fact that we had to prioritise affordability and turn bulk billing around, because too many patients were declining to go to the doctor or deciding not to go to the doctor because of cost.
“And we can’t have people making health decisions based on cost.”
