The Department of Health and Aged Care have reportedly pinkie-promised that GPs would not have Medicare rebates withheld for failing to upload to My Health Record.
Incoming sharing-by-default laws will give the Department of Health and Aged Care the power to make GP Medicare rebates conditional on My Health Record use – but it has promised not to exercise it for the time being.
The Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 was introduced in the House of Representatives last year and moved to the upper house earlier this week.
Its primary function is to require certain healthcare professionals to upload certain information to the My Health Record system, with the penalty for failing to do so being that Medicare benefits would be withheld.
The legislation itself is broad; the specifics of exactly what information will be mandatory to upload, and which healthcare professionals will have to upload it will be governed by a separate set of rules which will be added to or changed over time.
Health minister Mark Butler has unambiguously stated that pathology and imaging companies are the initial intended target of the laws, but it’s understood that this is just a starting point.
“The initial plan is to mandate uploads for pathology and diagnostic imaging, and in fact, that will often be useful for GPs and reduce the amount of time that we’re spent chasing old results and minimise duplication of testing and be a helpful environment,” said AMA president Dr Danielle McMullen.
“But we we’ve been very clear with government that linking uploads to the My Health Record to a patient’s Medicare rebate doesn’t make sense.
“It’s the patient’s rebate, and that’s not the best policy way of achieving their goals.”
Dr McMullen also confirmed that the AMA had been “assured” by DoHAC that there were no plans to extend the rules to GPs or other specialists in the near future.
In DoHAC’s submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the bill, it reiterated that the plan was to target pathology first but to keep the door open to other healthcare sectors.
“The Department and the Agency submitted that the bill intentionally does not dictate what health service, or health practitioner and what health information, is in scope of the requirement to share key health information,” the Senate committee report said.
“They noted that this detail is intentionally prescribed in the rules to support flexibility to adapt as health services and community health needs change.”
The Senate committee report, which was released last week, did not comment on the future scope of the legislation.
Additional comments from coalition senators, however, recommended the government be “transparent and consultative in drafting the upcoming rules so providers can prepare operationally and technologically without risking service disruptions” and to provide further information about future scope.
The committee’s only official recommendation was that the bill be passed in its current form.