Australian Medical Association

Price List and Order Forms for the AMA List of Medical Services and Fees available here.

The Extended Medicare Safety Net (EMSN) covers 80% of the patient's out-of-pocket costs once they reach a certain threshold. For more information, please click here [link].

The Medicare Safety Net provides a higher Medicare rebate to patients when their out-of-pocket costs exceed the threshold of $399.60 for all Medicare cardholders.

Patients may be eligible to claim a tax offset of 20% of their total out-of-pocket medical expenses provided that the total out-of-pocket costs reaches the threshold of more than $2,060 for 2011-12 financial year. 

This is the link to the AMA Fees list Online website.

This resources, with links to the ATO, will help doctors understand the implications and impact of GST on their practice.

Fees Gap Chart

This page provides answers to questions regularly asked of the AMA.

The AMA submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee inquiry into AHPRA highlights that the administrative failure by AHPRA to properly plan for and coordinate the transition to national registration has had a detrimental effect on individual medical practitioners, and on services to patients.  In failing to ensure that every medical practitioner transitioned smoothly to national registration, AHPRA failed to act in the public interest.  Patient care was put at risk because medical practitioners could not work.

The AMA has made a submission to the Productivity Commission supporting the introduction of a government funded system of comprehensive care and support for people with long-term, significant disabilities. The AMA also supports the introduction of a no-fault national injury insurance scheme.

The AMA has long campaigned for better indexation of Medicare schedule fees so that patients receives appropriate rebates for their medical care. The AMA Gaps Poster shows the effect of the difference between the indexatin of Medicare Schedule fees and the indices for Consumer Price Index and average weekly earnings.

The poster is produced to assist doctors to explain to their patients why they might have to pay a gap for their medical care.

The purpose of this Guideline is to clarify the responsibilities of medical practitioners, patients, and relevant third parties regarding certificates certifying illness ("sickness certificates") within the context of the doctor-patient relationship.

The AMA submission supports the proposed changes if they make the assessment process more timely, involve input from the relevant craft groups at every stage, and there is transparency of each decision taken during the assessment process. The submission seeks a clear and transparency for eligibility for assessment, and funding for data collection and analysis.

The AMA supports the establishment of a national disability insurance scheme which is "no fault" and comprehensive in the care and support it provides to cover the cost of long-term care for people with serious disabilities. The AMA's submission to the Productivity Commission's Inquiry brings to bear the expertise and collective experiences of the medical profession on what might contribute to the success of an optimally operating national disability support scheme from a health and medical point of view.

The AMA has developed a Privacy Resource handbook to help doctors comply with the Privacy Act 1988.

The Resource handbook is based on the Privacy Act 1988 in force as at 1 July 2010.

The AMA intends to update this Resource Book if the proposed changes become law.

The AMA has provided comments to the Department of Health and Ageing on the Initial Assessment and Quality Framework Appraisal application forms and guidelines and made a submission to the Department's Medical Benefits Review Task Group regarding the MBS Quality Framework discussion paper released on 29 April 2010.

The submissions outline the concerns about the proposed processes for assessment of services for the MBS, and the administrative processes of the MBS Quality Framework.

The AMA is supportive of evidence-based guidelines for the prevention and control of infection that are appropriate for the level of risk applicable to the various healthcare settings.

A national approach must be sufficiently flexible to accommodate the relative risks. The AMA is not in support of an approach where healthcare providers are required to implement infection control guidelines that are beyond the level of risk that occurs in a particular healthcare setting, are not practical to implement, and/or for which there is no evidence to justify adherence to the guideline.

AMA Submission to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 and Healthcare Identifiers (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2010

The AMA considers healthcare identifiers are an essential building block towards the implementation of electronic health records, and we are therefore a strong supporter of their introduction. Healthcare identifiers will facilitate the secure access to, and appropriate sharing of, electronic patient information by healthcare providers.

We support the passage of the Healthcare Identifiers Bill 2010 and the Healthcare Identifiers (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2010.

"let's talk about fees..." campaign products

In November 2008 the Council of Australian Governments' agreed to introduce a nationally-consistent approach to activity-based funding for public hospital services to allow comparisons of efficiency across public hospitals.

Subsequently, the Australian Government asked the Productivity Commission to examine and report on the relative performance of the public and private hospital systems. In June 2009, the Productivity Commission released a paper seeking information and feedback on a range of issues including treatment costs, including out-of-pocket patient expenses and rates of fully-informed financial consent, rates of hospital-acquired infections and other relevant performance indicators.

Below are the two submissions the AMA made to the Productivity Commission on the Performance of public and private hospital systems. The AMA submissions also address the Commission's term of reference on informed financial consent.

Establishment of the Healthcare Identifier Service was agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments in 2006 as part of the national approach towards accelerating work on electronic health records to improve the safety of patients and improve efficiency for healthcare providers.

In July 2009, the Department of Health and Ageing released a discussion paper on legislative proposals to support the establishment and implementation of unique identifiers for healthcare purposes and the privacy of health information.

The AMA submission on the discussion paper is supported by the AMA Position Statement on Unique Healthcare Identifiers in 2008.

The consortium of eleven graduate medical schools is seeking the ACCC’s permission to continue its policies and practices for selecting applicants to graduate medical schools. These include the preference policy where applicants submit a single application to the Graduate Australian Medical Schools Admission Centre, and the one interview policy whereby applicants receive only one offer for an interview.

In its submission the AMA has said that, on balance, the public benefits from authorising the graduate medical school consortium to continue these polices and practices outweighs any potential drawbacks;  however, the AMA has noted that where a graduate medical school uses the interview process to look for certain qualities in an applicant, there is the potential for the applicant to be disadvantaged by the interview process in some circumstances. The AMA has encouraged the ACCC to address these issues in the authorisation process.

The AMA submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee inquiry into the Health Insurance Amendment (Extended Medicare Safety Net) Bill 2009 highlighted:

• the Bill provides a framework for the Government to systematically withdraw its funding of the Extended Medicare Safety Net (EMSN);
• the shortcomings of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation Extended Medicare safety net review report 2009 upon which the Government’s decisions to cap certain services were based;
• the absence of Government consultation with the medical profession to determine the real impact on patients.

• that the Minister be required to consult with the relevant medical groups about their fee structures and any proposal to introduce and/or change a EMSN cap before making future determinations to impose EMSN caps on particular medical services;
• that the Government be required to commission an independent evaluation of the impact of this measure and the associated determination containing the 2009-10 Budget caps by 1 January 2012, and for the evaluation to be tabled in Parliament as soon as it is completed.

Caring for the frail elderly living in residential aged care requires doctors to spend a significant amount of time managing and organising the ongoing care of their patient. This includes discussing the patient's care needs with the nursing staff, maintaining medication charts, completing various forms, discussing care and treatment with the patient's relatives, liaising with pharmacies regarding prescriptions, and taking after hours telephone calls from nursing staff. There are no Medicare rebates payable for this work.

For many doctors, having made the investment in their surgeries, it is not financially viable to visit patients living in residential aged care, particularly when they have a waiting room full of patients.

The AMA's proposal for additional funding for access to medical services for residents of aged care facilities addresses this by recommending that the Australian Government provides specific funding to approved residential aged care providers to allow them to enter into service agreements with medical practitioners to provide ongoing medical care to residents in a particular facility.

Voluntary agreements between doctors and approved providers could be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and would complement Medicare rebates for medical services provided to residents of aged care facilities.

Because the type of work involved in preparing medico-legal, third party or other reports, eg for employers or insurance companies, varies so much and is influenced by a range of factors, such as the State or Territory in which the work is undertaken, the AMA does not recommend a level or range of fees for these services. Individual practitioners set their fees for this type of work based on the time and extent of the work involved.

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.

AMA List of Medical Services and Fees - Price List

AMA Position Statement: Ethical Considerations for Medical Practitioners in Public Health Emergencies in Australia - 2008

AMA Position Statement: Unique Healthcare Identifiers - 2008

in-fees is the AMA's newsletter providing updates on the activities of the Medicare Benefits Consultative Committee (MBCC)