Sydney lord mayor wants dogs to be allowed inside cafes and pubs,as well as an expansion of subsidised vet services.
There are early signs of pushback as the government probes changes that would give pharmacists,nurses and others greater authority to prescribe medicines or make referrals.
When St John WA opened the doors to its urgent care clinics across suburban Perth to ease demand on overrun emergency departments,all you needed was your Medicare card.
While Sydney’s most expensive gap fees were in Wentworth and Warringah,data shows,more than 75 per cent of GP clinics in nine Sydney electorates reported bulk-billing all of their patients.
In several suburban Melbourne electorates,more than 20 per cent of clinics said they stopped bulk-billing all patients during last year.
Services Australia is grappling with 1.1 million unprocessed health and welfare claims. Its new boss David Hazlehurst wants to halve that by the middle of this year.
A company with dozens of diagnostic imaging centres in Queensland has been taken to court by the Medicare watchdog over alleged “inappropriate practice”.
New data published by the federal government shows there has been a 2.1 percentage point increase in the national GP bulk-billing rate since November.
Universal health care was a proud Labor achievement. At 40,Medicare is in better shape than its US and UK peers,but there are cracks in the ageing edifice.
GPs want to relieve the burden on those with chronic and complex illnesses,and to provide yearly checks for children.
The overall bulk-billing rate for the 7.8 million diagnostic imaging services carried out in Australia in the September quarter was 76.4 per cent – the lowest since the three months to December 2013.