Speak Out April 2017 low res FINAL

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6 Speak Out June 2017
Association news
SPEECH PATHOLOGY AUSTRALIA Chief Executive Officer Gail
Mulcair and Ronelle Hutchinson, Manager, Policy and Advocacy
recently attended the “budget lock up” in Canberra and listened to
the Minister for Health outline the key measures in the health and
ageing federal budget.
Medicare freeze
There is some movement on lifting the Medicare freeze for our
private practitioners. But speech pathologists will need to wait
until July 2019 for the indexation of allied health MBS items. It is
a good sign, however, that the government is willing to reboot
its relationship with doctors and other health practitioners. The
government has also scrapped the proposed changes to the
Medicare Safety Net (proposed in 2014 but never agreed to by the
Senate), which will benefit clients with chronic conditions who have
high health costs.
Reforms to primary health care
It seems that the very public stoush between the medical doctors
of Australia and the federal government might be coming to an
end (this is a very significant achievement for the current Minister
for Health). Formal partnership agreements have been established
with key doctor and pharmaceutical groups. This means the
government can now turn its attention to some of its key reforms
in primary care including the roll out of the health care homes
trials (only $0.2million in the budget for this trial, as there has
been some accounting completed; and MBS “dollars” for patients
enrolled, will be redirected to the trial funding model). Very few
speech pathologists are employed directly by general practices
but are critical to multidisciplinary care for many people with
chronic conditions. The Association will be watching carefully and
identifying any threats (and opportunities) to increasing access to
speech pathology care for patients involved in the trials.
The government has now committed to a national roll out of the
“opt out” electronic My Health Record (with $374 million in the
budget to support this). The My Health Record has significant
limitations in that speech pathologists still don’t have full read and
write access to the record for their patients but the Association will
continue to advocate that this be corrected in the roll out.
There is a big commitment to a new Medicare and aged care
payment processing system (to the tune of $67.3 million in 2017–
2018). Rest assured the Association has already been involved in
discussions with government about the design of the new system.
NDIS
It is very reassuring to see a strong commitment to funding the
NDIS. Almost everyone in Australia will be contributing however,
and expect to see a little less in your pay check from July 2019
with an increase of 0.5 per cent in the Medicare surcharge (from
2 to 2.5 per cent of your taxable income). The Association will
continue to advocate strongly, loudly and persistently that dramatic
improvements are needed if NDIS participants are to continue
accessing speech pathology services through the scheme.
Crunching the numbers
How does the Federal Budget 2017-2018 effect
speech pathologists?