Medicare, one of Australia health providers is busy counting its losses.
Accordingly, skin clinics round the country have had their doctors resort to rorting or over servicing, by prescribing expensive operations and procedures that were not necessary.The loss in figure s caused by over billing Medicare will be reported today as Medicare's compliance body releases its 'Report to the Professions', which looks at inappropriate practices such as over-servicing and fraud.
Says Colin Bridge, spokesman for Medicare “The concern here is whether or not the treatment that's been provided by the skin cancer clinic is in fact something that's a medical need for the patient, as opposed to what we call screening - where people are taken on and given tests that they may not necessarily need to have.”
Skin clinics will now be closely monitored as there have been reports of several cases in which treatment at skin clinics appears to have been aimed at increasing profit for practitioners rather than what medical peers would regard as being in the best interest of patients.
The report also raises concerns about GPs claiming generous Medicare benefits for extended primary care sessions with older people and Aboriginal patients when all they had done was tick the boxes on a computer-generated form rather than carry out a detailed health assessment.
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