Closed: 22 September 2016
In April 2015, the Department of Health announced the formation of the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Taskforce as part of the Government’s Healthier Medicare initiative. The Taskforce is reviewing the MBS in its entirety, considering individual items as well as the rules and legislation governing their application.
The first review from the MBS Review Taskforce was released at the end of 2015, with 23 items removed from the MBS. An Interim Report to the Minister for Health was released on 6 September 2016.
The MBS Review Taskforce’s Clinical Committees released six Clinical Committee reports and the First Report of the MBS Principles and Rules Committee for public consultation.
The reports released for public consultation include:
- First report of the MBS Principles and Rules Committee
- Report from the Gastroenterology Clinical Committee
- Report from the Obstetrics Clinical Committee
- First report from the Diagnostic Imaging Clinical Committee – Low Back Pain
- Second report from the Diagnostic Imaging Clinical Committee – Bone Densitometry
- Report from the Thoracic Medicine Clinical Committee
- First report of the Ear, Nose and Throat Surgery Clinical Committee on Tonsillectomy, Adenoidectomy & Insertion of Grommets
The MBS Review Taskforce called on health professionals to have their say about the recommendations proposed by the Clinical Committees, prior to consideration by the MBS Taskforce and subsequent recommendations being made to Government.
In order to inform the RACGP’s Submission to the MBS Review Taskforce on each of these reports, we called on member feedback on the recommendations made within each.