Expand Bulk Billing To Save Our Community
"The recent introduction of Covid-19 related rebates for telemedicine with compulsory bulk billing for many patients is a great advance but simply not enough", said Dr Tim Woodruff, President, Doctors Reform Society. "We need much more."
"We need all patients, not just the most vulnerable, to have bulk billed telemedicine in this evolving crisis", said Dr Woodruff. "This needs to include asylum seekers and temporary residents and others who don't have Medicare but who need and deserve support for the sake of our community's safety and for their safety."
"But as well as covering all patients we desperately need more services covered," said Dr Woodruff. "If a provider can give a medical service of any kind via telemedicine and feels it is fit for purpose then it should be funded and encouraged and it should be bulk billed. In these times it is the provider who should decide whether telemedicine is appropriate, not health bureaucrats imposing conditions and restrictions which reduce service provision. Providers, whether GPs, specialist physicians, psychiatrists, nurses, nurse practitioners, mental health nurses, psychologists, physiotherapists and other allied health providers want to help."
"In addition we would encourage all medical practitioners especially specialists, to look harder at their charging practices and consider bulk billing most of their patients as so many of them are now facing a huge fall in income," said Dr Woodruff. "We want them to come for the best treatment. Putting financial barriers in the way will lead to some patients dying because they delay seeking care until it is too late. If so many of our fellow Australians are facing a major fall in income, surely most of us can manage a modest income reduction in the circumstances"
