GP clinic abandoned $10 fee after patient drop off

A BULK billing GP clinic that introduced a $10 fee for patients earlier this year had to abandon it after a month because of a dramatic drop off in patients.

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A BULK billing GP clinic that introduced a $10 fee for patients earlier this year had to abandon it after a month because of a dramatic drop off in patients.

Anne Wearne, the CEO of the Ovens and Kings Community Health Service in Wangaratta, fears patients will stop seeing their doctors again when the government’s $7 fee is applied next year.

Ms Wearne says the community health service was the only bulk billing clinic in Wangaratta.

“Business was getting tight so we thought in order to cover our costs we’d trial a patient co-payment,” she said.

“We found patients dropped off quite dramatically ... it was significant enough and doctors were concerned about having vacancies in their appointments they said to me it wasn’t working and they wanted to go back to bulk billing.”

She says she is worried what will happen when the service has to charge the $7 government co-payment from July next year.

Australian Medical Association spokesman Professor Brian Owler says he too fears some GP clinics may feel they are unable to impose the government’s new $7 fee on some or all patients.

These clinics will be making a $23,000 per doctor per year financial loss when the Medicare rebate is slashed by $5 by the government next year.

“I worry about the implications for quality of care delivered in some practices,” he said.

“If the rebate is cut by $5 and they are under pressure not to charge the $7 fee then they will adjust their model to go from six minutes medicine to five minutes medicine.”

There may be an incentive for doctors who keep bulk billing patients to treat just one problem per visit and make patients come back regularly, defeating the government’s attempt to rein in Medicare costs, he said.

“We need to work with the government to provide incentives for GPs who provide quality services and to do preventive work,” he said.

Originally published as GP clinic abandoned $10 fee after patient drop off