The Productivity Commission has commenced its latest Annual Review of Regulatory Burdens on Business. This year the Commission will focus on those regulations that mainly impact on the whole or any part of the social and economic infrastructure services. In broad terms, this includes construction, utilities, health, education, transport and communication industries.

The AMA has provided a submission to the Commission, highlighting the impact of Government regulation, guidelines and rules on the operation of medical practices. The AMA submission argues that medical practices are burdened with unnecessary red tape, particularly as a result of deliberate efforts by Governments to ration the number of services that patients can access and thus contain health costs.

The AMA submission argues that red tape in medical practice represents a significant cost to the community and that, while Government may take some comfort in the fact that it may reduce the number of services it has to pay, for this short-sighted approach ignores the subsequent downstream costs to the health system, costs to the health of patients and the inefficiencies it generates within medical practices.