Australians are set to be hit with a $20 fee to visit their GP under new changes to Medicare being introduced next week.
Under the Abbott government policy, Medicare will pay $20.10 less for consultations lasting less than 10 minutes, Fairfax Media reports.
In previous years, Medicare has paid $37.05 for short visits, slashed to just $19.95 from January 19.
Patients’ out of pocket costs or “gap fee” will subsequently rise.
The move is also expected to increase waiting times at the doctors, with consultations set to drag out to avoid the fee.
The Australian Medical Association said while doctors who continue to bulk bill will absorb the charges, some patients who would otherwise receive free care may now have to pay.
So, the changes to the rebates, for Level A and Level B, mean that for a Level B rebate, a minimum time of 10 minutes has to be spent with a patient. That’s quite different to the situation now where it’s based on complexity. So, those changes will mean that if a GP, an experienced GP, can deliver good quality care in eight or nine minutes, the rebate will go from $37 to $16.95, and that really is insulting to general practice, and that is why the AMA will be holding GP rallies in early February.
According to Australian Medical Association, The GPs have asked for the opportunity to demonstrate their anger, their unhappiness, about these changes and we call on the Government to step in – the Prime Minister to step in – and actually do the right thing and make sure these changes are properly debated, and that we can have a proper debate and discussion about health policy, which is what we need if we are to have a sustainable health care system and if we are to have good general practice that can actually do the chronic disease management and prevention that this country’s health system needs.
The move, aimed at slashing the health budget, comes after Prime Minister Tony Abbott scrapped the controversial $7 co-payment proposed in the federal budget.A little over a quarter of the 134 million GP visits billed to Medicare last financial year were under 10 minutes.
REBATES FROM JANUARY 19
The Government has changed the basis on which GP consultations are classified. Where previously they were differentiated according to complexity, from 19 January 2015 they will be classified according to time.
- Level A consultation rebate (less than 10 minutes) will be $16.95
- Level B consultation rebate (10-20 minutes) will be $37.05
- Level C consultation rebate (20-40 minutes) will be $71.70
- Level D consultation rebate (more than 40 minutes) will be $105.55
The changes will mean a dramatic re-ordering in the classification of consultations, and medical practices will have less than a month to update their systems and billing arrangements accordingly.
At present, just 3 per cent of all GP attendances are Level A consultations, while 83 per cent are Level B.
Under the new classification, the number of Level A consultations (which attract a much smaller fee) will dramatically increase to around 26 per cent of all GP attendances.
Source: Australian Medical Association