This issue - AMA Tasmania

IFC - let's talk about fees
In August last year, the Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, and Federal
AMA President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal wrote to every doctor in
Australia to launch the ‘let’s talk about fees’ campaign, which aims
to achieve a higher rate of informed financial consent for all private
inpatient medical services.
The Minister recently released data that indicates the campaign has
had some success.
A survey conducted in December 2006 showed that the number of
patients surprised by out of pocket fees for an episode of hospital
care had fallen to 16 per cent.
As the Minister says, it’s a big step in the right direction but there is
more work to be done.
The earlier survey conducted in 2004 indicated that anaesthetists,
pathologists, radiologists and surgeons’ assistants accounted for two
thirds of all episodes where IFC had not been obtained. These
practitioner groups have been working hard since the beginning of
the campaign to implement good IFC practice, and are confident
they can improve the rate of IFC obtained.
The Minister intends to conduct another survey in May to see
whether obtaining informed financial consent has become standard
practice for all elective procedures.
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We believe a survey in May is too close to the first survey to provide
any significant difference in results, and will be asking the Minister to
delay the second survey until at least July 2007, twelve months after
the beginning of the AMA campaign.
We have also asked the Minister to include some questions relating
to contact between health funds and their members prior to the
hospital admission. We believe talking to patients about out of
pockets costs is a two way street. Doctors are holding up their end
of the deal and its time for insurers to demonstrate the same level
of commitment.
However, if the medical profession is to avoid legislation that will
make obtaining financial consent compulsory for patients facing outof-pocket
medical expenses, it needs to maintain its already high
standards and improve on them.
Medical practitioners know that obtaining informed financial consent
whenever it is practical is the right thing to do. If we can lift the rate
of informed financial consent, we can avoid legislated compulsion.
Whenever it is practicable, talk to your patients about your fees and
the fees of the other doctors involved in your patients’ care.
The Federal AMA has developed resources to assist doctors in
this process. They are available at no cost from the AMA website -
www.ama.com.au - and all doctors are encouraged to use them.