Sweeping Medicare changes: How they will affect you

Your visit to the GP is set to change forever, with Medicare to fund computers to help diagnose conditions, instant blood tests and wearable monitors.

Wearable health monitors, instant in clinic blood tests, diagnosis assisted by computers and genetic screening will be part of a revolution in GP care starting next July.

Patients will have to enrol with a single GP practice and make at least three face-to-face visits every two years under a major overhaul of primary care unveiled by the federal government.

For the first time, Medicare will fund computer software, which prompts doctors to order certain scans, blood tests and medications based on a patients symptoms.

Within six years doctors will be funded to perform in clinic tests for things like blood counts, diabetes, heart attack, cholesterol and even the flu and Covid, that take minutes, instead of sending patients to a pathology collection centre.

Genetic testing will also be encouraged to identify hidden diseases.

Patients will be given wearable monitoring devices for things like diabetes and blood pressure, so doctors can check on them remotely.

The revolution in health care was unveiled in the federal government’s 10 year strategy for primary health care which plans to tie access to telehealth consultations, chronic disease care plans, health and medication assessments to a patient being registered with a single GP practice.

For the first time, Medicare will fund computer software, which prompts doctors to order certain scans, blood tests and medications based on a patients symptoms. Picture: Getty Images

Currently 10 per cent of a GP’s income comes from government-incentive payments.

Under the new regime, 40 per cent of their income will come from government payments.

To get these payments doctors will have to provide wrap around care for their patients, keep them out of hospital through increased monitoring and evidence based health care.

The first of these new “Service Incentive Payments (SIPs)” will reward doctors who provide quality bundles of care that stop older Australians declining into frailty and reduce their hospital attendances and to provide holistic care for people experiencing mental illness.

Patients who register with a single GP practice will receive funding for multidisciplinary team based care with their usual GP at the centre of a care team including nurses, allied health professionals and specialists.

When they go to hospital the GP will be notified and the hospital will communicate with the doctor about their ongoing care when the patient is discharged.

The GP reforms will start in July, 2022. Picture Getty Images

The new plan is part of a two year consultation process by the government and it attempts to overhaul Australia’s current disjointed and inefficient fee for service medical system.

Instead doctors will get bundled payments to provide comprehensive preventive and follow up care for patients.

Almost one in every two people are estimated to have one or more of the 10 most common chronic health conditions, this rises to eight in ten people aged over 65.

Each year the taxpayers spends hundreds of millions of dollars on preventable hospital admissions for these conditions that could have been avoided if people received more comprehensive health care.

By asking patients to align themselves with a single GP practice, the changes aim to make that practice responsible for a patient’s health condition and reward them if they provide comprehensive care that prevents a person needing hospital care.

As part of the process the government will develop a range of guidelines for preventive health care.

These will outline the type of care a person should expect from the moment they are born.

The first guidelines will be “robust post-natal guidelines to support development and growth of children in the first 2000 days”, the report said.

Australian Medical Association Vice President and GP Dr Chris Moy has welcomed the reforms which he said would bring an end to 15 minute medicine and support a shift to flexible models of care based on patient need.

“This is a once in a generation opportunity to evolve general practice structure and funding beyond a system that perversely favours volume and throughput,” he said.

The carrot for doctors and patients to shift to the new system was only practices that used the new model could access to telehealth consultations and the greater access to wound care, nurses, chemists and other health professionals, he said.

“To support general practice to make this leap of faith we need the government to also make a leap of faith in committing to properly fund this change,” he said.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Dr Karen Price said her organisation had provided in-principle support to the draft Primary Health Care 10 Year Plan, “however, it is conditional on sufficient investment into general practice funding”.

“If we are serious about boosting the general practice workforce in the years ahead, we must address long-term funding arrangements,” she said.

“This plan is a critical opportunity to improve the lives of all Australians through achievable and cost-effective reforms and investments in primary care.”