Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 9:06:44 to 9:12:47
Senator Pocock highlights the low bulk billing rate for ultrasounds in the ACT and the department provides an update on the Women's Imaging Review.
Topics: Health, Government spending
Speakers: Senator David Pocock, Mr Duncan McIntyre, Speaker 41, Speaker 43, Unknown Speaker, Senator Ellie Whiteaker
Um then just finally on um coming up against time. Um I just want to go back to ultrasounds. I just can't get over the ultrasound situation in the ACT. Um I've spoken to Canberrans who've driven to Golden to get out ultrasounds because they can get bulk billed. Um because they're much uh much cheaper. Um the ACT's bulk billing rate for ultrasounds is continuing to fall. Uh it was 40% when I first started asking questions about this, it's now down to 30%. Um it's 66% nationally. Uh what's what's happening?
Yeah, so that those figures are correct. So um the national bulk billing rate for Australia for ultrasound is 66%. Um the bulk billing rate in the ACT for ultrasound is 30.2 per cent.
Yeah, it's how do we change that?
Is that is that your problem or uh Senator, some of the these are challenging problems and appreciate um your concern is um is quite understandable. Um the drivers for um these concerns are um not unrelated to those that occur for bulk billing, in that um within the ACT there are other business models that can be attractive for providers in a way that isn't so much the case in other parts of the country. And so um that has tended to be one of the the issues that has contributed to these statistics, and we're continuing to look for ways to incentivize um practitioners in the ACT to um to take up the incentives that government is providing.
I appreciate that, but with respect, Mr. McIntyre, we can't be looking that hard if they've gone from 40% to 30 per cent. Like is this a market issue? What needs to happen? Because it is totally unacceptable to have a 30% bulk billing rate for ultrasounds. Um you can say, well, Canberra's earn a lot of money, but that is we know that that is not the case. We have a two-speed economy here. There's a whole bunch of people who earn good money, and there's so many Canberrans who simply cannot afford to pay for things like ultrasounds. How do we how do we fix this?
So we we've recently undertaken a women's imaging review, which included ultrasound services and breast imaging. Um the department has undertaken that in consultation with stakeholders, and uh a large focus of the review was about uh appropriate fees for breast imaging and ultrasound services for women. Um and that report is uh being finalized and is currently with government for consideration.
And what what happens here? I mean, looking looking at the providers, these are not small businesses, these are big providers now who've actually been buying up these small businesses and are charging through the nose here and charging five. In Goldman or Queen Bean, surely there's something we can do. Like that just seems to me like price gouging.
So if a patient is bulk billed, um they get instead of have the service out of hospital where they there's an 85% rebate to the patient, and if they're bulk billed, there's 95% of the fee goes to the provider.
It's nice to know, but it's 30%. Sure. Is there more work happening to look at how we solve this, or do I just come and ask questions every estimates and this must be solvable, surely?
Once this answers complete, we'll rotate the call, Senator Packard.
Senator as Ms. Warner's uh pointed out, we've recently done a review in this area, and it is certainly an issue that the department continues to work uh with stakeholders, including those providers, um patient groups and others to try and find a way to incentivize uh the programs that government has made available to underpin bulk billing.
Okay. I I just find it I find it totally unacceptable that we have a bulk billing rate of 30 per cent for ultrasounds in the ACT. And it doesn't sound like there are any sort of solutions even on the table to try and address that. We have all these problems that I keep being told are just specific to the ACT and yet we can't solve them. We have so many smart people in this room. Um Minister, please, please can we have uh acknowledge the investments the governor has made, but we've got to be able to sort this out. Not everyone in Canberra can just stump up the cash every time.
No, and I think what you recognise, and thank you for acknowledging the investment the government's made in bulk billing those three clinics that only recently opened, as the Secretary said, we're still waiting to see the impact that those will have, and we are very hopeful, but it is something that we absolutely will continue to monitor to make sure that the incentives and the new clinics do have the impact that we are hoping they will have in the ACT. Um and if there are more interventions that are needed, we'll consider them. Uh as you know, we are working very hard on developing our health workforce as well, and I won't go through that because it's part of the next outcome. But there's a lot of work that this government is doing to train the next generation of health workforce as well, noting that we've had um you know pretty steady decline in training over the decade before this government came into power.
Thank you.