Doctors given ‘callous’ demand to bill family of dead patient over public hospital loophole

A flaw in a system designed to relieve public hospital pressure is creating anger and grief among patients, say doctors, who believe it wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else.

Doctors who fought in vain to save a patient’s life after being called in to help in a public hospital emergency this month face having to bill the family for their work — because the patient who died was not admitted.

Rural doctors say the situation is a huge flaw in contracts where rural GPs are on call to help in small public hospitals — and say it would not be tolerated in Adelaide.

Rural Doctors Association of SA committee member Dr Gerard Considine at the Wudinna Medical Centre.

It means local GPs called in to country hospitals without staff doctors on site to treat patients who are not admitted — for example someone with a dislocated shoulder — face billing the patient.

Rural Doctors Association of SA committee member Dr Gerard Considine said the death was an awful situation handled professionally by nurses and doctors.

“The hospital system has now deemed the doctors should not get paid by the hospital as the patient was ‘not admitted’,” he said.

“Emergency patients who are not admitted — and that means being at the hospital for four hours or more — are seen as outpatients and not the hospital’s responsibility.

“If there is an emergency patient who is not admitted the doctor has to privately bill the patient. In this case, the doctors involved have effectively been told to “send an account to the family”, an abhorrent, callous suggestion.

“This is a clear example of how the current outdated contract needs to be changed. If this were the case in Adelaide, there would be uproar.”

Negotiations over a new contract deal have stalled.

Fellow RDASA committee member Dr Phil Gribble noted some patients become angry when told they face a bill for what they thought was a public hospital ED treatment.

The RDASA warns failure to improve contracts will continue to discriminate against country patients and see doctors leave the system.

It is understood that since inquiries by The Advertiser, officials have stepped in to take care of the costs.

Chief Clinical Adviser Rural Support Service, SA Health, Dr Hendrika Meyer.

Chief Clinical Adviser Rural Support Service, SA Health, Dr Hendrika Meyer said SA Health is committed to supporting GPs and ensuring high quality health care services can continue to be delivered in regional SA.

“The Rural Support Service has been co-ordinating the negotiations with the AMA and RDASA on behalf of the six regional Local Health Networks,” she said.

“We are working towards an agreement that is sustainable across the whole of regional South Australia, recognising the equal contribution and benefiting all rural doctors.

“We have made increases to the payments for GPs in this offer, with an overall increase of roughly ten per cent across the whole agreement.

“We have carefully considered the points put forward by the AMA and RDASA and have been able to incorporate a large number of their requests into our revised offer. Our new proposal is another step forward in the negotiation process.

“Once the associations have time to consider our latest offer, we would like to be able to come together to continue discussions and move forward with the negotiations.”