Australian Doctors' Federation

10/07/2025

ADF highlights the crucial role of independent medical practitioners in the wake of recent behaviour by third party funders. Read more at https://ausdoctorsfederation.org.au/2025/07/10/the-australian-doctor/.

22/05/2025

1️⃣ 5️⃣ Lack of Medicare education

There is little to no Medicare education at medical school or during specialty training.

Given Medicare enjoys a monopoly status in Australian healthcare, it is incumbent on it to do more with respect to education.

22/05/2025

Recordings from the landmark Future of Youth Gender Medicine seminar held at NSW Parliament in March are now available on the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists' website.

Free webinar for psychiatrists wishing to understand the Future of Youth Gender Medicine

19/05/2025

As the nation went to the polls on May 3, over 200 health professionals were meeting in Sydney to discuss concerns about the health regulator AHPRA. Watch ADF Chair Dr Aniello Iannuzzi's brief summary of the issues here:

In this brief summary of the recent AMPS / ADF conference The Misdeeds of AHPRA, Dr Aniello Iannuzzi outlines the major areas of concern arising from the co ...

15/05/2025

1️⃣ 4️⃣ The Medicare book

Once upon a time, all doctors used to receive a book from Medicare every year, listing all the item numbers and relevant rules.

Sometimes a supplement would also be sent during the course of the year.

Not any longer!

As a result, doctors find it very hard to keep abreast of all the changes of an increasingly complex MBS

15/05/2025

1️⃣ 3️⃣ The 30/20 rule

This is the cousin of the 80/20 rule discussed yesterday; this time consultant physicians are included.

The exclusions are puzzling, as they appear to favour allied health practitioners over medical practitioners.

For a busy doctor to do 30 telehealth consultations in a day is not unreasonable.

08/05/2025

1️⃣ 2️⃣ The 80/20 rule

The 80/20 rule aims to address high volumes of rendered or initiated services by some but not all medical practitioners.

The rule is a blunt instrument that targets GPs. It does not fairly distinguish quality versus quantity.

Our chair wrote about this over a decade ago and nothing much has changed:
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2013/6/aniello-iannuzzi-irresponsible-rule/

08/05/2025

1️⃣1️⃣ Established relationship requirements

To access Medicare rebates for telehealth, there must have been a face-to-face visit with a doctor in the practice in the last twelve months.

Whilst this appears fair, it disadvantages healthy patients who infrequently need a doctor.

Many exemptions are also defined, some of which are quite open ended such as BBCSRH consultations.

As a result of the open ended nature of exemptions, many businesses have opened up in direct competition to general practices.

An exemption that would be appropriate but is absent is geographical isolation: patients who live a great distance from doctors should have open access to telehealth.

08/05/2025

What has Australia's health regulator AHPRA achieved? Listen to the ADF's Dr Chris Davis's short introduction to the Misdeeds of AHPRA conference held in Sydney on Saturday 3 May 2025.

In this short presentation, ADF's Dr Chris Davis outlines the failure of AHPRA to improve the health of Australians, and the damage done to the public's trus...

06/05/2025

🔟 Telehealth rebates

The Medicare rebate for a telephone consultation is the same as for a face-to-face visit to the doctor.

But are the visits of the same quality?

And what about the higher costs for the doctor in providing face-to-face visits?

Entire businesses are run on the telehealth model based on convenience and access.

However the quality differential should be reflected in the rebates.

05/05/2025

9️⃣ Cost-shifting between state and Federal governments

In theory, the Federal government covers health care outside of hospitals and the state and territories cover care within hospitals.

However state and territory government clinics increasingly access Medicare rebates for patients seen in hospitals and clinics run by them.

This is done via special agreements between Federal and state governments.

Understandably, states and territories spend considerable time and money into devising ways to get Medicare to pay for things that they once paid for.

This is why many patients often need to see specialists in private clinics in order to access public waiting lists for operations.

State governments also run Medicare clinics for some services, at an unfair commercial advantage over private practices, as the states are not subject to many of the fees and taxes that are paid by private practices.

It is time for the Federal-state cost-shifting to be cleaned up.

03/05/2025

8️⃣ Indexation

Medicare rebates have not been indexed correctly for 40 years, resulting in rebates now being less than half of what they should be for most services.

Both sides of politics need to take responsibility for this.

Patients are the biggest losers with increasing out of pocket expenses.

The biggest impact of this is in general practice, where the Medicare rebate alone is not viable for practices. General practice has been forced to rely on incentives, blended payments and other sources of income, in order to achieve financial viability.