Ratepayers in rural Tasmania are being slugged with a medical levy to help prop up GP clinics, prompting fresh calls for the commonwealth to step in.
Key points:
Glamorgan-Spring Bay Mayor Robert Young said the levy was necessary to ensure the municipality’s vulnerable population had access to health care
AMA Tasmania president John Saul said rural practice especially was struggling for funding
He said an urgent review into Medicare funding was required, along with long-term planning
Councils including Glamorgan-Spring Bay, the Huon Valley and the Tasman have had to step in to keep local clinics open, and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) fears more will be forced down the same route unless Medicare funding is increased.
Glamorgan-Spring Bay Mayor Robert Young said the levy was necessary to ensure the municipality’s vulnerable population — where the median age is 56 — has access to health care.
Mr Young said about 60 per cent of the adults in his municipality were either retired or on some sort of government benefit.
“The levy is $90 payable every year by every ratepayer and it’s used to subsidize general practice and to encourage general practitioners to come to the east coast,” he said.
For two years, Sarah McLay has dipped into her personal savings, sacrificed a take-home wage and run her central Queensland medical practice at a loss of “several hundred thousand dollars”.
Key points:
A 2021 survey of 846 GPs found 47 per cent of female GPs’ weekly consultations involve mental health
RACGP is urging the federal government for more equitable rebates for mental health-related appointments
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler says the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce will examine potential rebate increases
Regardless of the hours Dr McLay worked or the patients she saw, the numbers did not stack up.
“We were really subsidizing the public’s health care,” Dr McLay said.
“Nothing is ever truly free. Everything costs someone something.”
Most patients probably don’t think about the finances of a medical clinic — and that’s provided you can get into the waiting room in the first place.
Yet financial strain is part of a hidden toll that Dr McLay and other general practitioners say is disproportionately affecting women and adding to skills shortages as burnt-out doctors leave the profession.
A financial and emotional gender disparity has emerged because female GPs tended to see more patients needing longer consultations.
Dr McLay says Clermont will have no permanent doctor if she was forced to close her clinic.(Supplied)
“Yes, I did medicine because I wanted to help people, but I can’t change the reality that our Medicare rebate is actually completely inadequate to pay our bills,” Dr McLay said.
“I can’t keep sacrificing and suffering because the government doesn’t value what we do.”
Short appointments more lucrative
General practitioners across the board have reported struggling to provide care with Medicare rebates that have not increased with inflation.
Louise Stone, a Canberra GP and medical educator said short consultations received a higher rebate per minute than longer appointments.
Dr Stone said she would “earn four times as much” doing back-to-back vaccination appointments than a 40-minute consult for someone with mental health or chronic physical conditions.
