But he will honour his pre-election commitment to add all specialist gap fees to Medical Costs Finder.
Federal health minister Mark Butler has nixed any plans to immediately introduce a rebate rise for specialist appointment fees, while saying he planned to increase the usefulness of the Medical Costs Finder website.
During a press conference last week Mr Butler was asked if a possible rebate rise was part of his desire to do more to address specialists’ out-of-pocket fees.
“That’s not on the table right now,” he said.
“The first thing that we want to do is provide patients with better information. The former government, under former Minister Greg Hunt, tried to do that through a voluntary opt-in scheme called Medical Costs Finder, where a specialist would upload the gap fees that they charge their patients.
“We had a few dozen specialists who had uploaded their fees – not a very successful foray by a former government into transparency and information sharing.”
Before the election Mr Butler said the DoHDA would collect the gap fees that every non-GP specialist was charging and upload that to the Medical Costs Finder.
“[That way] patients, when they’re considering, for example, a knee operation, will have the best possible information about the range of gap fees, for example, that are charged in the western suburbs of Adelaide,” he said.
“They can make an informed choice about who they end up going with or seeing and having an operation by.”
