How many patients will be denied care if gap-only billing is restricted? The government doesn’t know
An AusDoc FOI attempt was unsuccessful, but that says something in itself…
The Federal Government is considering preventing doctors from ‘gap-only’ billing for the vast majority of Medicare services.
But it seems it has no idea how many patients will struggle to access care they need if they end up having to find all the cash up-front.
That is because it hasn’t bothered to collect the information.
Under a proposal outlined in its consultation paper released last year, the Department of Health said it was planning to restrict the use of gap-only billing — formally known as Pay Doctor Via Claimant (PDVC) — to those items with a Medicare fee above $697.
