GP rebate set to rise

THE Medicare rebate for GP visits will rise, and there will be help to get more doctors and health workers in the bush, and new Medicare rebates for cancer scans in next week’s Budget.

But a series of Budget cuts will see patients find it harder to have an MRI scan of their knee and people with sleep problems will face restrictions on access to sleep studies.

Access to spinal fusion and skin lesion treatments will also be tightened and testing for allergies will be streamlined.

The Medicare rebate for GP visits has been frozen for four years and the Budget will fund a rise of about 55 cents a visit from $37.05 to $37.60 from July 1.

Doctors say the rise is not enough and data shows out-ofpocket costs to see a GP have risen by more than 15 per cent from $30, when the freeze began, to almost $35 in 2016-17.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Bastian Seidel said there were 150 million GP consultations each year and this rebate rise would apply to the 110 million standard visits.

Medicare rebates for specialist visits and other medical services will remain frozen until 2020. Out-ofpocket costs for these services have risen by $12.30 per visit, government data shows.

The Budget is expected to deliver help for rural communities struggling to attract doctors.

New rural health commissioner Paul Worley is expected to get funding to establish a training path for rural generalist GPs who can perform obstetrics and deliver specialist mental health or other care.

These medical graduates would be able to do more of their training in the bush.

The Budget will also contain funding for a range of new medical tests. A Medicare rebate of about $400 will be made available for prostate cancer scans, helping around 20,000 men per year.

A new $114 rebate for threedimensional tomosynthesis of breast tumours will help 240,000 women when their doctors order the test to diagnose and treat breast cancer.