Govt faces backlash from doctors as Medicare telehealth cuts loom
Funding for longer phone consults ends next week but many GPs believe video consults have little additional benefit
![Mark Butler.](https://www.ausdoc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Butler_Mark_Official-6.jpg)
Medicare items for longer telephone consults, which will be scrapped next week, need to be retained because of the ongoing risk of COVID-19 transmission in GP practices, the RACGP says.
The $75.75 MBS item for telephone consults lasting longer than 20 minutes will vanish next Friday despite being claimed almost 100,000 times in April.