Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I thank members for their contributions on this bill. I particularly thank the member for Flynn for his recent comments showing the level of understanding he has of the contribution the joint replacement register program makes to his community in northern Queensland. We also thank the opposition for their support for this bill, as we understand it—though the shadow minister spent most of his speech making fairly gratuitous remarks completely unrelated to this bill, which does him no service at all. The one issue the shadow minister did address that related to this bill did so in a tangential way, and that is the issue of consultation. I understand that the Department of Health and Ageing will be discussing the implementation of this program in the bill with stakeholders.

The Private Health Insurance (National Joint Replacement Register Levy) Bill 2009 will impose a levy on the sponsors of joint replacement prostheses in order to fund the National Joint Replacement Registry. A joint replacement prosthesis is a prosthesis that is listed on the Commonwealth Prostheses List and used in joint replacement surgery. The person who made the application to have the joint replacement prosthesis included on the list will be the sponsor for the purposes of the new levy. The registry collects information about joint replacement surgeries, such as hip, knee, ankle, shoulder, wrist and spinal disc replacement procedures, and reports on the safety and quality of these procedures and of devices used in the operations.

The work of the registry is critical to improving health outcomes for many Australians, as has been outlined by the members who have contributed to this debate. The registry provides improved patient outcomes, and it is estimated that, due to reductions in the level of hip and knee revision procedures while the registry has been operating—a decade or so—the registry has saved the health sector and consumers around $44.6 million. The registry provides data indicating which devices are linked to higher revision rates, which helps orthopaedic surgeons to select better-performing prostheses.

Taxpayers have met the operating costs of the registry for over 10 years, which are now around $1.6 million a year. It is appropriate that these costs are now recovered from industry, which derives considerable benefit from the registry. The registry provides invaluable post-market surveillance of joint replacement prostheses and also assists the industry by informing the development of new prostheses. The proposed arrangement will preserve the independence of the registry. There will be no possibility of funding being withdrawn from the registry by medical devices sponsors who are not happy with its findings. The introduction of cost-recovery arrangements will also produce $5 million in budget savings over four years. Legislated cost-recovery arrangements will ensure continuing and stable funding for the critical work of the registry and ensure that it can continue to provide data to improve patient outcomes.

Sponsors will be levied according to the number of joint replacement prostheses they sponsor, and the levies will only be used to fund the operating costs of the registry. The bill provides that there may be different rates of levy for one or more kinds of joint replacement prostheses, the levy rate may be set at zero, and there will be a maximum levy rate of $5,000 per listing per year. This range of levies is appropriate, as there are a very wide range of products included in the registry, from screws and bolts that are priced at less than $50 each to specialised knee replacement systems, which can have prices of more than $67,000. The government will determine the amount of levies through rules made under the legislation following consultation with the registry and the medical devices industry.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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