Doctors face being mired in more red tape every time they request an EEG under the latest plan to cut inappropriate testing by the MBS Review Taskforce.

The review’s neurosurgery and neurology clinical committee says it wants all referring doctors to fill out a standardised form that includes questions about the patient’s condition and guides the referrer towards the best next steps, “which sometimes might not actually be an EEG”.

MBS data show requests for EEGs are frequently made in situations where they are “unlikely to be clinically useful”, the committee claims, pointing to paediatric febrile seizures, syncope and headache as situations where the tests have little or no clinical value.

Other situations where EEGs are “likely to represent low-value care” include non-specific fatigue, mood disturbance and tics, and “excessive repeat testing on the same patient, either over the course of several days or over a longer period”.