The latest GP Medicare Benefits Schedule, which came into effect on July the 1st, has removed rebates for telehealth phone consultations longer than 20 minutes.
Rebates for video consultations over 20 minutes will continue, leaving doctors not only confused but concerned for many Australians in rural and regional areas.
Not everyone has been able to make the digital transition, and doctors and advocates are appealing to the government to not exclude them from Australia's healthcare system.
professor Karen Price, from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, says there's no justification for cutting rebates for phone consultations.
"We've already had plenty of examples and anecdotal evidence on all the doctors' forums, they were talking about their most vulnerable patients, people with disability, people who are in rural and remote areas. I know ACRRM argued very strongly for the Aboriginal cohort, because they have a low confidence using the technology. And so there's a range of different cohorts who are not able to use the internet for video telehealth."
A study by electronics company Philips has revealed 40 per cent of Australians living in rural and remote areas have internet speeds of less than 28 kilobits per second.
The minimum recommended speed for video calls is 600 kilobits per second.
Professor Price says Labor should commit to their promise to improve healthcare for all Australians.
"We need the government to recognise that telephone telehealth is an established part of an adjunct usual care with a usual GP. So we need to reinstate it, very simply, these are vulnerable people who are going to miss out. And I would have thought of all governments that the Labor government would understand that too, who's going to have poor access to this sort of medical care?"
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