Federal Budget 2023: How MyMedicare will help Aussies, GPs

Patients and GPs are set to benefit under new major reforms to Medicare. Here’s how.

Patients will be encouraged to enrol with a single GP practice under major reforms to Medicare in the budget that will earn them extra benefits.

And GPs will get a $2000 incentive payment when they enrol patients who are frequent hospital users and agree to provide wrap around care for them to keep them out of hospital.

Doctors will also get a share of $112 million of new funding when they enrol aged care residents with their GP practice to receive ongoing care.

The measures are part of a major reform to Medicare that will see doctors encouraged to provide complete care for their patients instead of providing tick and flick six minute consultations.

The new system, called MyMedicare, will start on November 1 and patients who enrol with their GP will for the first time be able to access long telehealth consultations with their GP that last more than 40 minutes.

RACGP president Dr Nicole Higgins. Picture: Supplied

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) president Dr Nicole Higgins said long telehealth consults would be particularly useful for frail elderly patients who had difficulty getting to the doctor’s clinic.

It would also help mental health patients, she said.

“Enrolment will be voluntary, it needs to ensure that people can enter and exit so it’s really important that people have choice and it doesn’t take away doctors being able to charge fee for service,” she said.

Doctors did not want MyMedicare to turn into a system like the UK’s National Health Service where GP practices were given a set pot of money to treat each patient for the whole year.

“They’ve (the UK) got all the GP’s leaving the system because it’s actually taken away choice and means that patients can’t see their GP if they want to, there are long waiting lists when somebody needs an x ray, they’ve lost the freedom of choice,” she said.

GP’s will be eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in other funding that will help subsidise the cost of employing nurses, physiotherapists, mental health workers and social workers as a result of the budget.

These workers will be crucial in providing wrap around comprehensive care of patients.

They will also get new funding to keep their clinic doors open longer at night.

While welcoming the $5.7 billion injection into Medicare in the budget and the tripling of incentive payments to bulk bill pensioners, concession card holders and children, Dr Higgins said it could all amount to nothing if the states did not back off on their plans to impose payroll taxes on cash strapped GP clinics.

“Most general practices are fairly marginal now and the biggest risk with all of this Medicare reform and especially with tripling the bulk billing incentive is payroll tax,” she said.

“We’ve got a commitment from the Queensland Government for an amnesty until mid 2025 but with Victoria and New South Wales this is really problematic. We’ve already got practices closing because of that.

“We’ll be speaking with Mr Butler about solutions for payroll tax.”

AMA president Professor Steve Robson. Picture: Supplied

Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Professor Steve Robson said he was “delighted to see initiatives and funding that put general practices at the heart of long-term reform”.

“We needed immediate resuscitation or there may be no primary care health system left,” he said.

Originally published as Federal Budget 2023: How MyMedicare will help Aussies, GPs