Australian Medical Association

The AMA publishes the List of Medical Services and Fees. It is provided to members for costing assistance and guidance only.

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. 

Previous versions of the AMA List of Medical Services and Fees are attached.

Previous versions of the AMA List of Medical Services and Fees are attached.

Pathology services in Australia are amongst the highest quality and the most accessible in the world. However, Government funding cuts to pathology services have had an impact on the quality, accessibility, affordability and safety of pathology services. Government funding changes can also have a significant impact on the sustainability of the pathology sector including the ability to support ongoing training, research and development.

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 submission on Medicare funding for online consultations calls for funding not to be limited to video consultations only, but include telephone calls, emails and other non-video online consultations that are necessary for providing care to patients who are remote to the specialist caring for them.  The submission also says that the MBS items should be drafted broadly to enable treating doctors to use their clinical judgment to determine when an online consultation is clinically relevant for their patient and the clinically appropriate technology to use to provide the service.

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.