These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: The decline in 'free' general practitioner care in Australia: reasons and repercussions.
    Author: Hopkins S, Speed N.
    Journal: Health Policy; 2005 Sep 08; 73(3):316-29. PubMed ID: 16039350.
    Abstract:
    The Australian public insurer, Medicare, allows general practitioners (GPs) to bulk bill patients, or accept the government rebate as full payment for their services. The percentage of GP consultations bulk billed, however has declined from 78.6% in June 2000 to 65.7% in December 2003. The immediate impact of a declining level of bulk billing is a decrease in the availability of free GP health care for patients. This has implications for copayments and access to GPs for low income groups in particular. In this paper, we explore the reasons for and repercussions of the decline in bulk billing. We analyse two main reasons for the decline. The first is a failure of the rebate to maintain a level consistent with increases in medical practice costs. The second is a decline in GPs in some regional and rural areas resulting in a decrease in price competition. The government has recently made changes to deal with the decline in bulk billing and based on three quarters of data, there has been a modest improvement in bulk billing.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]