The federal government’s Strengthening Medicare Taskforce report released on Friday outlines ambitious remedies for the national healthcare system,but offers no immediate fix to overwhelmed emergency departments,declining bulk-billing rates and rising out-of-pocket medical costs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with premiers and chief ministers after national cabinet on Friday.James Brickwood
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the government would act on health reform,declaring it national cabinet’s top priority this year after his meeting with state and territory leaders on Friday morning.
Doctors and health policy experts warned the reforms outlined in the report lacked detail and offered no short-term fixes to a growing healthcare crisis and no commitment from the government to.
“Australians can see the crisis the health systems are in,” Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson said.
“We were surprised to see nothing more come out of it. We had the most powerful political leaders in the country all in one room doesn’t seem they could agree on anything.
“By the time all of the reforms that are in the Strengthening Medicare taskforce come to fruition,we’re all going to be standing around a rotting carcass of what used to be Medicare. We need to resuscitate things now if we’re going to have scope to deal with the other things in the taskforce report.”
The taskforce recommended blended funding models to manage patients with chronic disease,where a clinic receives a lump sum from the government alongside the existing fee-for-service model,and introducing voluntary patient registration,which gives a practice annual payments or other benefits when patients sign up for continued care.
It also calls for incentives to ensure multidisciplinary teams of GPs,nurses,midwives and allied health professionals can practice without red tape restricting their ability to treat patients.
The government will make no decisions on whether to adopt the taskforce’s major recommendations until its May budget,when it will allocate $750 million over three years to Medicare reform,meaning Australians will wait until July at the earliest before any new measures are introduced.
Medicare is facing its biggest overhaul in 40 years as the government flags changes in the May budget.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the government would move on some of its simpler suggestions in May – such as allowing GPs to bill it for longer sessions in more complex cases – and was already acting on its election promise to introduce 50 urgent care clinics around the country over the year,the first of which will launch in Perth at the end of June.
“I want to be really frank with Australians and with people working in the health sector,I know that this is not going to fix things in and of itself. I know this is not a single budget challenge. I know there will be more to do,” Butler said.
“But this report sets[out] a very clear challenge to government about how we start to turn things around in general practice and primary care more broadly.”
Health economist Stephen Duckett,who was on the taskforce,warned it would take 12 months to begin to see change.
“I don’t think tomorrow we’ll see a different health system from today … It will take a couple of years for the foundations to be established,so maybe going into the next election the government ought to be making a commitment to put a lot more money into the system.”
He suggested implementing the report would cost billions more than the $750 million the government promised at the last election.
The premiers,,dialled back their rhetoric as they arrived in Canberra on Friday,emphasising that system reform was more important than dollar figures.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Nicole Higgins said the report carried a high level of ambiguity and the “devil will be in the detail”.
“The promise of reform without proper investment to back it up is hollow,” Higgins said.
Associate Professor Lesley Russell,from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics,said the government had now claimed ownership of the issue. “The report highlights the right things that need to be done,” she said.
“[However,] there is probably a fairly high level of frustration among those people on the coalface who really are quite anxious about their future.”
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