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Medibank fails to crack Darwin line in Defence contract battle

Defence Personnel Minister Warren Snowdown is facing an embarrassing home town revolt against the Federal Government’s move to contract out health care services for Australian Defence Force personnel.

Northern Territory specialists appear to have unanimously rejected controversial provider agreements offered by Medibank Health Solutions (MHS), delivering a significant blow to plans to transfer the care of 80,000 Defence personnel nationwide to the Medibank Private offshoot.

None of the Darwin-based specialists so far surveyed by the AMA have signed a MHS contract, and Dr Peter Beaumont, President of the AMA Northern Territory branch, said the private provider was also encountering resistance among general practitioners unhappy with the terms of provider agreements.

Aspen Medical has been selected by MHS to provide medical practitioners to all on-base Australian Defence Force facilities across Australia.

“I am not aware of any specialist that has signed up, and it is not just surgeons and orthopaedic surgeons,” Dr Beaumont said. “I know of three GPs up here who have refused to sign up.”

Darwin is a major hub of operations for the ADF, and Minister Snowdon’s seat of Lingiari encompasses most of the Northern Territory.

Shadow Defence Minister David Johnston said he was “deeply concerned” that the MHS dispute would undermine the quality of care provided to ADF personnel.

“I have been warning the Defence Minister the system is flawed because the best doctors in Australia were not going to sign up to what is essentially a cost-cutting measure by the Government,” Mr Johnston said. “The best doctors in the country, who have treated Defence patients for years, have withdrawn en mass, and in some areas not a single doctor has signed up”.

The united front of Darwin specialists against MHS contracts and mounting resistance among GPs has come as a leading medical recruiter has launched a major drive to hire GPs to work at Defence Force barracks and bases around the country.

Charterhouse Medical has called for expressions of interest from locums to work in “defence and military health” at sites including barracks and naval bases.

“Our client is keen to secure talented GPs as soon as possible for short and long-term flexible contracts…across every state in Australia, urban and rural,” Charter Medical said.

Charter did not identify its client, but the call for locums at military barracks and bases around the country adds to perceptions that MHS’s $1.3 billion takeover of ADF personnel health care is coming increasingly unstuck.

According to reports in Fairfax newspapers, Defence has delayed the switch to a MHS list of preferred specialist providers by six weeks, in a clear sign that the organisation is struggling to get the practitioners its needs to provide the level of care required.

Military doctors had been due to begin referring patients to only those specialists on the MHS’s preferred provider list from last week but, according to the Fairfax report, they will be permitted to refer patients to a specialist of their choosing for at least another six weeks.

AR

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