“Medicare funding of General Practice needs to change away from fee for service if Medicare is to be viable in the future”said Dr Robert Marr Secretary General of Australian Doctors Reform Society
“General Practice has been underfunded for the last 10 years resulting in many GPs unable to continue Bulk Billing or even closing their practices.”Said Dr Marr
“Australia needs to learn from overseas countries such as New Zealand and the UK that the main solution to improve the funding of General Practice is to change the method of paying GPs from the fee for service payment system that just encourages a rapid turn style care of patients to a system where patients chose a GP practice and that GP practice is given a yearly payment to co ordinate the care of each enrolled patient with the goal of keeping the patient well and out of hospital.In this patient enrolment model of care money saved by GPs keeping patients well and out of the very expensive hospitals can be redirected to GPs.”said Dr Marr
“Ït is vital for both improving the quality of health care and improving funding for General Practice that all Australians had an incentive,that could include automatic Bulk Billing, to voluntarily enrol with one General Practice that would reestablish the important ongoing Doctor Patient relationship that has been shown to be effective in reducing health costs overall by helping to keep people well and out of the more expensive areas of health care such as hospitals”said Dr Marr
“Also,young medical graduates need to be encouraged to train as GPs by providing a training salary including sick leave,holiday pay and study leave.that is at least as much as they would earn in hospitals.”said Dr Marr
