No more pilots, said Mark Butler as he announced that upwards of 80% of GP practices have signed up to MyMedicare in its first 12 months, despite the lack of active incentives tied to the scheme.
Health Minister Mark Butler is calling time on the era of endless primary care pilots, promising that MyMedicare will be the future of primary care.
Speaking at the RACGP GP24 conference in Perth on Friday, Mr Butler said that 80% of Australia’s 6300 GP practices have joined the voluntary patient registration program.
“Together, they have registered more than two million patients, with another 50,000 joining every couple of weeks,” he told delegates.
“This is organic growth, without marketing or advertising, with no financial reward yet for patients or practitioners – just more than two million patients seeking a stronger relationship with their regular GP.”
Technically, that part about financial rewards is incorrect on two counts. Starting last year, practices and patients signed up to MyMedicare could exclusively access rebates for level C and D telehealth items, as well as the tripled bulk-billing incentive for level C, D and E telehealth consults.
The first financial incentive for GPs went live in July with the launch of the revamped General Practice in Aged Care Incentive.
Under the initiative, practices receive $130 per registered patient per year and individual doctors receive $300 per registered patient per year in addition to existing MBS or DVA rebates for services provided.
According to Mr Butler, despite the incentive being up and running for just four months, about 40% of Australians in residential aged care are MyMedicare-registered.
In all, that represents about 75,000 patients.
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The next incentive to be rolled out on MyMedicare will cover chronic condition management items and is currently scheduled to go live in July 2025.
“[Under the previous administration] Australia was caught in a chronic cycle of chronic condition pilots,” Mr Butler said.
“Just pilot after pilot after pilot – what the Grattan Institute called a little while ago, ‘more pilots than Qantas’.
“Thankfully, we’ve made it through that … and Australia now has, finally, the foundations of an enduring system in place with MyMedicare.”
Mr Butler also took a minute to defend what some have seen as a shift from endless pilots to endless reviews.
“The [Strengthening Medicare] Taskforce sketched a map to a stronger Medicare and called for further reviews to flesh out the details,” he said.
“Those primary care reviews have been delivered to government now and to the sector as well, with recommendations on everything from how practitioners are paid for their work, what work they are allowed to perform and where they’re encouraged to work in our big, vast country.
“Each review has filled in a section of the map that the taskforce sketched for us as we use it to find a path to a stronger Medicare.
“I’m going to rely very heavily on the [RACGP] to navigate the way, as an absolutely critical stakeholder in this work of reform.”
With a federal election likely to be called in the first half of 2025, the health minister stressed that the Albanese government’s tripling of the bulk-billing incentive was only the beginning of planned investments in general practice.
He also noted that GP satisfaction, as per the RACGP Health of the Nation report, had improved following Labor coming into power and that training numbers were finally ticking upward.
“That’s perhaps because [GPs] sense that there has been a very clear improvement in the esteem in which your profession and your specialty is held in Canberra by your government,” Mr Butler said.
“A government that recognises general practice as fundamental to the health system and absolutely critical to the health of our country.”
GP24 was held at the Perth Convention Centre between November 21 and 23.
