Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to continue on e-health. In relation to e-claiming, there was significant resistance from the department of health to the implementation of e-claiming, for a whole lot of different reasons—and I am happy to have individual chats with the ministers about that so that they are fully aware of the background. In relation to e-claiming, there was also a push from doctors to receive a clip of financial support to implement it, but there is a very strong argument that doctors get huge benefits out of e-claiming, such as getting the money immediately, not having bad debtor issues and also HICAPS, which is run in relation to obstetricians and a range of others—physiotherapists and so on. There is an e-claiming process that is run by the National Australia Bank that is a very good process. If it works for obstetricians and for a range of allied health professionals as well, there is no reason it could not operate for doctors. So I just make that suggestion as well.

Also we certainly had a push, from our perspective in Human Services, to have mobile doctor provider numbers and for the provider numbers to be not constrained by region but mobile. That would have made a very big difference to regional and rural Australia, particularly for doctors going up to regional and remote areas and not having provider numbers that are constrained by individual areas. The push from Human Services in part was so that doctors going to remote areas could carry around mobile devices—the equivalent of those hand-held devices that operate in restaurants—and you could put in the Medicare card and the doctor provider number would be linked into that hand-held device.

That leads me on to the point where there were initial moves—I know quite difficult—to simplify the MBS item number schedule, which would have made it a lot easier for Medicare. A lot of doctors did not understand what the correct item number was for billing purposes, and in regional and remote areas, particularly in Indigenous communities where there are a lot of foreign doctors operating—and thank God they do—they did not know exactly which was the right item number and they were undercharging. I would also be keen to know if Medicare have kept their people out in the Western Desert. They had a person located out there and I started a program where they could stay with Indigenous communities and ensure the Indigenous communities had the right item numbers. A Medicare person was located in one Indigenous community west of Alice Springs and, because they were explaining to doctors the right item number, an extra $¼ million a year was going into that Indigenous community. Because Medicare is uncapped, it is a great way to get real money into those communities simply by the doctors and nurses knowing what the appropriate item number is to list. Medicare was undertaking that, but there were some difficulties getting some Medicare personnel into regional and remote areas. I know that Medicare had a person in Far North Queensland who did a great job and we were trying to get more Medicare people out in the field rather than in the offices. The whole e-claiming area is probably a topic about which I can have a private discussion with the minister. I think there is a very bipartisan agreement that we have to get e-claiming and e-health right and one of the greatest challenges is embedded views within the various departments.

In relation to Australian Hearing, I would be keen to get an update on how the telephone deafness check is going. That was a program that I initiated three years ago with Australian Hearing after seeing it operating in London. This is where individuals can ring a phone number and have a hearing test over the phone. Elderly Australians would benefit most from that. The program was launched and it was probably the best program in the world, so I would be keen to find out how that is going. I would also be keen to get a general update on how the hearing test program is going in Indigenous communities, because Australian Hearing started that program. (Time expired)

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