On March 1, Hobart customers received an email saying national rebates paid to doctors who see patients after hours were part of “major cuts” and had made finding doctors “close to impossible”. 

“As you can imagine, it is already difficult to get doctors to work in the after hours period,” the email from the organisation’s chief executive John Pappalardo said. 

“This Medicare cut has made recruitment and retention of doctors close to impossible.”

Chief Government Whip in the Senate, David Bushby said the federal government had taken steps to ensure patients requiring genuinely urgent after-hours treatment receive the best quality care under medicare. 

“To better reflect the urgency of the services and the qualifications of the doctors providing the service, new Medicare Benefit Schedule items for urgent after-hours care, were introduced on March 1,” Mr Bushby said. 

“These changes will result in fully trained vocationally registered GPs and GP registrars in Launceston receiving a greater MBS rebate for urgent after-hours visits, compared with non-vocationally registered GPs.”

The recommendations came from the MBS review taskforce that was made up of clinicians and consumers. 

“The Taskforce’s recommendations were made based on data that showed use of urgent after-hours items had increased by 157 per cent between 2010–11 and 2016–17,” Mr Bushby said. 

He said Tasmanian Primary Health Network had advised there was a “healthy” level of after-hours doctors in Launceston.

“They continue to commission the GP Assist service that provides after-hours telephone medical advice to the community and Tasmanian health professionals.”

However, Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley said the medicare cuts were stopping Tasmanians getting the health care they needed. 

“[Prime Minister Malcolm] Turnbull went to the last election promising no one would pay more to see a GP, but costs are skyrocketing,” Ms Polley said. 

“There are around 960,000 Australians skipping or delaying seeing a GP because of cost - including over 10,400 Tasmanians.

“Mr Turnbull needs to reinvest the $409 million that they’ve cut back into after-hours primary care, not use it as another excuse to continue his attack on Medicare.”