General Topics
The AGPA will be present at the upcoming RACGP Practice Owners Conference at the Cairns Exhibition Centre 24 & 25 May 2024.
A number of Directors will be present so this will be a great opportunity to catch up and discuss the issues that are important to you as a Practice Owner and what the AGPA can do to help.
See you at Stand 1
Australian General Practice Alliance (AGPA) Warns Walk-in Clinic Budget Funding Will Not Significantly Ease Primary Care Access Crisis
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
13/05/2024
AGPA Deputy Chair Dr Mukesh Haikerwal AC said today the increased funding for walk-in primary care in tomorrow’s budget will fail to address the biggest issue in care delivery, the threat of closure faced by hundreds of GP clinics across Australia.
Dr Haikerwal said unless Federal and State Governments urgently addressed the issue of payroll tax levied on GP clinics, investment in the sector would dry up and eventually hundreds of clinics will be forced to close.
He said recent court decisions had required practices to treat payments collected on behalf of GPs from patients as payroll, totally undermining the funding model and potentially leaving many practices on the brink of insolvency.
Dr Haikerwal said the 58 urgent care clinics have seen 400,000 patients since being established last year. He said even with the additional 29 clinics to be announced in the budget they were likely to see fewer than 1 million patients a year compared to the close to 170 million consults in General Practice. “It is a drop in the bucket. A distraction from the real task of properly funding and supporting General Practice to improve access nationally. It is cherry picking funding for certain areas and providers rather than using the funds to incentivise existing providers to handle more urgent cases which they could do at a far lower cost per patient,“ he said.
Dr Haikerwal said the Federal Government would do better to work with States to tackle the payroll tax issue. He welcomed the recent announcement by Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto that in government it would exempt clinics from payroll tax. He urged all state and territory governments to adopt a similar position or risk increased chaos in the sector as it moves into long term decline.
The payroll tax campaign continues with a joint campaign with AGPA, RACGP and PCBC very active in Victoria.
The AGPA leads are Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, AGPA Deputy Chair and Dr Sarah Lewis, AGPA Board Member.
RACGP survey data is now confirming the predictions of the impact of payroll tax with only 3% of Practices considering that they would be able to absorb the tax and 78% of Practices (95% of Victorian Practices) indicating they would need to raise fees. The implications of this for the provision of primary healthcare
Since November the joint campaign has
The AGPA Practice Poster – Don’t Tax Health is here.
Printable version is here
The Australian GP Alliance made a submission and engaged in a number of discussions with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding our concerns with the Australian Clinical Lab’s proposed acquisition of Healius. AGPA’s concerns centered around the potential for service quality reduction and the reduction of competition for collection centre rentals. This has the potential to impact on a tender process to establish market rents, with a resultant reduction in the ability to establish rental rate that is higher the assessed value of the property.
On 15 December 2023 the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced that they would oppose the Australian Clinical Lab’s proposed acquisition of Healius
The ACCC has decided to oppose the proposed acquisition of Healius Limited (ASX:HLS) by Australian Clinical Labs Limited (ASX:ACL).
Following an in-depth investigation, the ACCC has concluded that the proposed acquisition is likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition in Australian pathology services markets.
The ACCC considers the proposed acquisition is likely to substantially lessen competition in the supply of out-patient pathology services, private hospital in-patient pathology services, and commercial pathology services.
ACL and Healius both supply pathology services to the community, private and public hospitals, commercial and government customers, and veterinary clinics. They compete closely with one another and offer services under well-known brands.
“We consider that the proposed acquisition would be likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition as it would combine two of the three largest providers of pathology services in Australia, further consolidating already-concentrated markets,” ACCC Commissioner Stephen Ridgeway said.
The full ACCC media release is here
Tuesday 12 December 2023, 7:30pm AEDT
6:30 pm Queensland, 7:00 pm SA, 4:30 pm WA
Speakers
Paul Copeland, Director, William Buck
Ben Ryan, Senior Associate, Avant Law
Victoria, NSW, ACT, Queensland and South Australia are all applying precedents which allow them to charge payroll tax on medical professional fees paid to independent GPs under conventional General Practice structures.
Recognizing this as a major risk many Practices have taken the approach of removing aspects of contracts which may suggest a relationship other than a service relationship between the clinic and a tenant GP. This may present issues for Practices in achieving clinical coverage during preferred patient hours and in other areas such as clinic accreditation.
The webinar will discuss the implications of contractual administrative controls for payroll tax exposure and the potential to expose clinics to other employment law liabilities.
Book at
https://www.trybooking.com/CNPBI
Places will be limited, preference will be given to AGPA members.
For further information contact the AGPA Secretariat
Speaker Profiles are here
The Australian pathology industry is dominated by four large companies. When measured using the number of Approved Collection Centres (ACCs) as a measure of market share three companies dominate the industry: Healius, Sonic and ACL have approximately 80% of the ACCs.
When the smaller share held by 4Cyte is added, the proportion of the market held by these four companies rises to over 90%.
On 23 March 2023 Australian Clinical Labs Ltd (ACL) made an off-market takeover offer for Healius Ltd offering 0.74 ACL shares for every Healius share. The offer period expires 29 September 2023.
For those General Practices with ACCs the maintenance of a competitive market for lease space in Practices is critical. Without a competitive market rents could be expected to decline over time, and the use of tenders processes or other arms-length negotiations to establish a market rent would become very difficult.
Tuesday 29 August 2023, 7:30pm AEST
7:30 pm Queensland, 7:00 pm SA, 5:30 pm WA
Speakers
Paul Copeland, Director, William Buck
Ben Ryan, Senior Associate, Avant Law
State Payroll Tax is threatening to become a major threat to the viability of General Practices in many Australian States.
Victoria, NSW, Queensland and South Australia are all applying precedents which allow them to charge payroll tax on medical professional fees paid to independent GPs under conventional General Practice structures.
Queensland and South Australia have both announced a moratoriums on the application of payroll tax rulings but the outcome at the end of the moratoriums will apparently require PRT to be paid.
Practices are faced with either charging patient levies to cover the tax (with issues for bulk billing), or restructuring so that the tax provisions do not apply. The risks with restructuring are significant with potential changes to financial management practice and to the relationships within the Practice.
The speakers will discuss approaches which reduce PRT exposure risk while maintaining key functionality.
Book at
https://www.trybooking.com/CKRZA
Places will be limited, preference will be given to AGPA members.
For further information contact the AGPA Secretariat
Speaker Profiles are here
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
08/08/2023
The Australian General Practice Alliance (AGPA) maintains the recent decision by the Department of Health and Ageing, which attempts to mandate a single prescription exchange provider for publicly funded prescriptions runs counter to the interests of primary care sector and its patients and is by its design anti-competitive.
AGPA said the move eliminates the healthy competition that existed between MediSecure and Fred IT, two key companies providing prescription delivery services to the community since these services were being designed in 2009.