Medicare Rebates For Phone Consults To Be Wound Back

When the Health Minister, Greg Hunt, announced earlier this week that Medicare rebates for telehealth services would be extended until the end of 2021, he failed to mention that this extension would also include removing almost all Medicare item numbers for phone consultations.

From July 1, Medicare rebates will still be available for short phone consultations that take less than 20 minutes. They will not be available for longer consultations or for chronic disease management plans, mental illness assessments or health assessments for Indigenous patients.

Since the rollout of telehealth across the community during the pandemic last year, the government has made it clear that video consultations were its “preferred approach for substituting a face-to-face consultation”.

Until now it has also offered Medicare rebates for phone consultations which have been widely adopted, especially by the ME/CFS community. The government is now seeking to discourage their use so that phone consultations become the exception rather than the rule. In keeping with this, Medicare rebates for video consultations will remain.

The medical community has responded strongly to these changes. President of the RACGP, Dr Karen Price, said she urges the government to reconsider, and that this decision is likely to impact vulnerable patients the most.

President of the AMA, Dr Omar Khorshid, agrees, saying that “The permanent future of telehealth must include access for people who are disadvantaged and that means, at this stage, telephone consults.”

These changes will have an enormous impact on ME/CFS patients who often cannot tolerate video calls.

While the pandemic brought an unexpected silver-lining in the form of improved access to medical care through the telehealth rebates, this is being whittled away. First, through the requirement to have had a face-to-face consultation with the GP in the previous 12 months, and now with limited access to rebates for phone consultations from July this year. And, anecdotally, we know that some GP clinics are also refusing to offer telehealth services to their patients.

While the Health Minister assures us that his plan is to make telehealth a “permanent part of Medicare system”, it begs the question how much access vulnerable patients will have once it’s implemented?

Help make your voice heard by writing to your local MP and asking them to:

• Make telehealth services a permanent part of Medicare

• Continue rebates for phone consultations

• Waive the requirement of face-to-face appointments for patients who are housebound or bedbound