The national body representing after-hours home doctors, the National Association for Medical Deputising (NAMDS), has released survey results which show 79 per cent of Australians regard after hours doctor home visits as a very important or extremely important part of Australia’s Medicare system.
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The Galaxy survey results released on Friday come as NAMDS is ramping up the campaign to protect home visits ahead of a Federal Government-sponsored Medicare Review consultation paper expected to target the service.
In a submission to the review, NAMDS says after-hours visits are a “central plank” of Medicare and any cut would be fiercely resisted by the community.
“The government introduced Round the Clock Medicare in 2005 so Australians had a lower cost alternative to emergency departments for urgent health issues, late at night,” NAMDS president Dr Spiro Doukakis said.
“Round the Clock Medicare is working and emergency department presentations after 11pm have actually dropped over the past five years – we’ve managed to stop the bleeding.
“Now we have the crazy situation where people are pushing to cut Round the Clock Medicare because service use has expanded into most Australian towns and cities which means obviously more people are using the service.
“We think people in regional communities are as entitled to receive this essential service as people living in the major cities.
“You don’t cut policies which have been successful and saved taxpayer dollars – you invest more in them. But for some, that seems to be trumped by a siloed approach that simply says: this service is growing so we need to cut it.
“The reality is if we cut this Medicare service, you’re cutting Medicare and we’ll just see the cost come back to bite us twice over in increased emergency department presentations.”
The cost of a home visit is $128 compared to the $368 if the patient uses an emergency department instead, according to a Deloitte Access Economics report released 10 days ago.
NAMDS said one million Australian families rely on after hours visits.