Some 27,000 eligible patients may have missed MBS heart health checks because of the COVID-19 pandemic, says the National Heart Foundation of Australia.

The Heart Foundation was behind the creation of a new item in 2019 which offered rebates of $75 for GPs to perform absolute CVD risk assessments and draw up management plans for patients aged 45 and older.

However, it emerged that no GP organisations had been consulted, with rebate pegged at the same rate as a level C consult, through which GPs were apparently doing the heart checks anyway.

On Sunday, the foundation released figures from its own modelling, estimating 345 heart attacks, strokes and heart disease deaths could have been prevented if more checks had gone ahead between March 2020 and July 2021.