00:01This is one of the potential solutions being canvassed by this inquiry and it's funding
00:06for what's known as secondary consultations, which is when a GP consults a specialist for
00:12advice about management of a patient, a diagnosis or whether a referral is needed. Now, there
00:19are some existing Medicare items for similar consults, but they're not broadly available.
00:24Now, an example of this could be, for example, a GP has a patient with a questionable mole,
00:30they could call a dermatologist and ask them for advice on that rather than automatically
00:35sending their patient to that dermatologist and that dermatologist could say, you know
00:39what, that's right, we can just monitor that for a few more months and that would alleviate
00:43the pressure on the specialist. There have been similar programs that have happened in
00:50parts of Australia and overseas and evaluation of those programs have shown that they reduced
00:56a significant proportion of referrals to specialists. The committee chair and Labor MP Mike Freelander
01:05says that this proposal could really help reduce demand for specialists and also prevent the need
01:10for patients to wait for a long time for care or pay a lot of money for care. Take a
01:14listen.
01:15Well, at the moment, it's a bit of an ad hoc arrangement. Many GPs will ring specialists they
01:21know and ask them for advice about a particular patient, but we think we could formalise that
01:27in a way that both the GP and the specialists are enumerated for that and it would help people in
01:34rural and remote areas. Steph, what are people telling you about the state of specialist care in
01:40Australia? Well, people have told us that they're waiting a long time to see specialists and also
01:47that they're paying a lot of money to see specialists. For this story, we spoke to one Melbourne pensioner
01:53who was on a public wait list to see a gastroenterologist for two years. Eventually, she had to pay a
01:59thousand dollars to see someone privately. She said that was money that she didn't have and by the time she
02:04was seen, her specialist said she had one of the worst cases of gastritis and esophagitis
02:10that they had seen. One of the issues that this inquiry is looking at is public wait times for
02:17specialist clinics. At the moment, there are public outpatient clinics. Those are run by the states.
02:21They provide about a third of care, but people are waiting for months, if not years, to get in to
02:28see
02:28those specialists. The outgoing vice president of the Australian Medical Association, Julian Wright,
02:34he's an ophthalmologist. He's been in the industry for 35 years and he says over that time,
02:39he has seen the public outpatient clinic capacity collapse. Take a listen.
02:44I guess I'm a little despondent about how late this discussion has occurred. I mean,
02:52I think it should have been occurring at least 10, 15 years earlier. And of course, now we're in a
02:58situation where we've reached a high inflation environment, where we haven't really prepared
03:04the system adequately for that. Now, this inquiry will also examine workforce shortages,
03:10which is obviously a very big issue when we're talking about specialists. There are projections
03:15that there'll be a shortage of about 7,000 specialists by 2033. So, we'll have a look at that
03:20and it will also examine the age-old question of whether the Medicare rebate should be lifted.
03:25So, we'll have a look at that and then we'll have a look at that, that's what the Medicare rebate
03:25should be lifted.
03:26So, we'll have a look at that and then we'll have a look at that and then we'll have to
03:28take a look at the
