When a patient joked that Dr Elizabeth Oliver had just earned “easy money”, it hit a raw nerve.
So the Sydney doctor took to her blog.
In her post What I Do for $37.05,
This was because doctors were “time squeezed” and struggling to provide the quality care that could prevent health problems escalating and needing more costly interventions, such as hospital care.
Some 600,000 hospital admissions a year are thought to be avoidable, and each one costs around $5,000, according to the National Health Performance Authority.
“The point is that GPs are amazing value for money,” Dr Oliver said in an interview on RN’s Health Report.
“I don’t know of any other profession that would accept an eight-year freeze on an increase in their pay.”
The most common consultation for GPs is one that lasts less than 20 minutes. For this they are reimbursed $37.05 from Medicare.
Current and previous governments have failed to increase this amount, which is slated to remain the same until 2020, despite the increase in the cost of delivering services.
This freeze has prompted some medical practices to increase the fees they charge patients and reduce their bulk-billing rates.
But many argue they can only pass so much onto patients and GPs themselves are left unfairly bearing the brunt of the rest of the shortfall.