A Melbourne GP has warned quality healthcare could soon be reserved for the rich, with poor and vulnerable patients already forced to run the gauntlet of clogged emergency wards.
Mariam Tokhi, a general practitioner at the Utopia Refugee Health Service in Melbourne's west, said Australia's failing bulk-billing incentive meant people with complex medical needs were being left with no other choice but to join hospital queues.
A Medicare rebate increment of only 1.6 per cent and growing inflation have forced some GPs to pass on the additional cost of consultations to their patients.
The average out-of-pocket cost for GP services has risen 60 per cent over the past decade.
Dr Tokhi said it meant patients, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, were choosing to defer doctors visits or head to hospitals once their conditions had spiralled.
She says bulk-billing incentive rebates remains "shamefully low" and increasing these, as well as Medicare rebates for longer consultations, are key to preventing chronic illness and premature death across low socio-economic regions.
"Medicare rebates aren't adequate anymore to cover the cost of seeing a GP," Dr Tokhi said.
"Especially if you have complex health conditions and need a bit of extra time.
"It means wealthier people might choose quality care and pay a gap fee but the people who need it most — the poor, the chronically ill, the struggling — either get poorer-quality, quick, bulk-billed consults or they go without."
FULL STORY
Doctor warns failures in outdated Medicare bulk-billing system risk tipping health system over edge (ABC News)
PHOTO
Mariam Tokhi is a general practitioner at Melbourne's Utopia Refugee Health Service.(Supplied: Mariam Tokhi )
