Dear Practice Owners

Many of you have now received a letter from the Department of Health titled “Strengthening Compliance – Pathology Approved Collection Centres”. Our assessment at this stage is that whilst we need to remain vigilant to emerging threats to pathology rents, this letter is not an immediate cause for alarm.

The letter is part of a routine mail out to all doctors who request pathology services, informing them of the new version of the “The Red Book”, that outlines the regulations associated with the Health Insurance Amendment (Inappropriate and Prohibited Practices and Other Measures) Act 2007. The letter did not target GPs and did not target Practice Owners with co-located pathology collection centres.

I have had a face to face meeting this week with the Health Minister’s advisor on this issue, Ms Joanne Tester, who has confirmed that there has been no change to the definition of market rent within the regulations. This primacy of the principle of willing seller, willing buyer when determining pathology rents is what we successfully fought to uphold in the aftermath of the last federal election. As such, we encourage practices to continue to apply the willing seller, willing buyer principle in their negotiations with pathology companies.

Ms Tester has advised that there are now plans to establish a database of pathology rents being paid nationwide over the next 12 months (records are currently paper based). This is consistent with the Department’s previously stated plans to improve data gathering with the intent of commencing targeted compliance activities. Whether this remains their intent in 2018, or whether this is simply a delay mechanism to appease pathology providers remains to be seen.

As always, the political landscape remains fluid and we have the opportunity to positively influence the future course of this and other key issues, in favour of GP owned practices. To provide this strong focussed voice we are pro-actively planning our strategy for the upcoming federal election, both to combat predictable risks from competing industry bodies and to proactively push to improve the position of GP owned general practices. Please let us know what the key issues are for your practice that you would like us to target in the upcoming election.

Please also assist us to grow our political muscle by proactively reaching out to other practice owners and get to know your local member of Parliament so that you can lobby them during the election. Every new AGPA member not only amplifies our voice at a ministerial level, it also strengthens our reach into local communities and gives us the capacity to feed politicians deepest fear- losing their own seat.

Yours sincerely

Dr John Deery

Chair
Australian General Practice Alliance