New Legislation set to be passed by the Federal Government will compel doctors to hand over confidential patient details to government auditors to prove appropriate Medicare billing.

The proposed legislation will mean doctors can no longer guarantee the privacy of any consultation.

The AMA believes this has profound implications for patients.

Confidentiality of patient consultations has been a central platform of the doctors’ oath for 2400 years.

Patient trust in the privacy of their discussions with doctors ensures they can be candid, revealing information that is deeply personal, but is often crucial in defining the care that is needed.

Sometimes the doctor is the only person in the world with whom a patient feels they can discuss their most intimate concerns.

This legislation destroys this trust.

It tells patients that government auditors have a legal right to see their private health information.

Doctors are already saying they will go to jail before breaching the trust of patients.

The Minister and Medicare Australia have attempted to play down the impact of the legislation, claiming audits would be ‘a simple administrative check’, yet the legislation is specifically designed to reverse current legal protections for the patient record.

Medicare admits this will include ‘those issues which can only be confirmed by reference to clinical information’.

Clinical information is not administrative information. The patient record that contains this clinical information often includes intimate private details of patient health. The legislation being discussed is specifically designed to provide access to these clinical records. Talk of administrative records is simply designed to hide this frightening truth.

Doctors understand the need for appropriate and valid audits. They are not welcomed as they take doctors time away from patients but, in the end, the need to protect the integrity of the system is accepted.  


Doctors want to work with government to support the integrity of the Medicare system. But government must also recognise and support the integrity of the doctor patient relationship. The relationship is too important to be sacrificed to hand over the powers to read, copy or take an excerpt of the individual patient record when even Medicare currently claims that it would only be used 'infrequently' and by 'only a few select authorised staff'.

The fundamentals of this relationship cannot be blithely disregarded. There is no place for government in the consultation room.  A consultation is between the patient and the doctor – not the patient, doctor and a government official.