AMA Private Specialists meet to discuss priorities for 2023

The Council of Private Specialist Practice held their first meeting for 2023 on 7 March. Led by new Chair, Dr Michelle Atchison, a robust discussion was held about private hospital capacity which has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The AMA is aware that the trends are especially problematic in the areas of obstetrics and inpatient psychiatric care.

The meeting agreed the issue of inpatient psychiatric care requires urgent action and the AMA would work with other key stakeholders to ensure government is aware and focussing on the alarming slump in private inpatient psychiatric care occurring across the country.

The committee also discussed work underway within the AMA on the key issues of:

• Private health insurance policy settings
• Out of hospital care models
• Improving the value of private obstetric care

The committee also discussed the reforms to the prostheses list which sets out which medical devices health funds must pay benefits for and how much they must pay. The committee supported the AMA’s key principles that these reforms:

• support the clinical choice of prosthesis by the medical practitioner, to ensure that the best product is used for any patient.
• provide for the medical device companies to support Australian specialists in their use of specific prostheses.
• provide access to a full range of prosthetic items to suit patients’ different clinical needs; and
• ensure patients do not have out of pocket costs for a prosthetic item regardless of its expense.