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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-14 Daily Xml
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Regional Mental Health Services

Ms PRATT (Frome) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister nominate additional regional centres for an exemption under the Modified Monash Model to better support access to rural mental health? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: In two letters sent to the minister, a regional psychologist reports that patients on Eyre Peninsula are cancelling their mental health treatment because they cannot afford the full cost of the consult. A letter from Dr Amanda Rogers says, and I quote:

All clients who have been referred to an Allied Health Service from one of these Medical Centres since June 2024 have had their Allied Health Rebates rejected. This crisis is severely disadvantaging people residing in a remote community, where access to health services is already incredibly difficult.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:25): I thank the member for Frome for her question. This relates to where the state government provides the services to meet what is really a federal government responsibility in terms of providing doctors on Eyre Peninsula. We operate a number of clinics through the Eyre and Far North Local Health Network, and those clinics often use locum doctors to be able to provide services to those communities and we have been working with the commonwealth to try to resolve the Medicare situation for those clinics.

The member references a number of psychology visits that people have through their mental health plans through the federal government services. They require doctors to refer them with a Medicare number, and because we are trying to resolve that issue with the federal government that hasn't been able to occur.

This is an issue that I have been raising with the federal government and, specifically, with Minister Mark Butler. We need them to make sure that those doctors who are providing those services, where the state government is stepping in to really do what is a federal government responsibility, have the ability to make those services under Medicare and therefore allow those flow-on services, whether they be psychological services or other services, to be able to be billed appropriately.

Just this week, I had a meeting with the local health network and I understand there have been meetings with the commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care where there has been progress in relation to this matter. We believe, at the very least, there will hopefully be an interim solution, that the federal government will allow that to occur and will allow those appointments to be made and allow those item numbers to be put on those references through schemes like the Better Access scheme and others.

So I am hopeful that this matter will be resolved at the very least on an interim basis within coming weeks. Ultimately, we would like to see the federal government step up to the mark in terms of their need to provide those primary care services for those communities on Eyre Peninsula where unfortunately the state government and our local health network—and predominantly our role is to provide acute services—are having to provide those primary care services. I am hopeful and optimistic that we will see a resolution to this matter.

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