The pre-Christmas announcement that private health insurance premiums will rise by an average of 6.2 per cent in 2014 has raised concerns about affordability. But while consumers aren’t expected to drop their cover because of the price rise, it ought to prompt closer scrutiny of the services insurers pay for.
Rehab picture from Shutterstock
Indeed, a recent Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) inquiry concluded the practice of providing rebates for some health professionals but not others — for the same or similar services — had serious consequences for both consumer choice and health professions.
Scope of practice and legitimacy
All regulated health professionals work within a “scope of practice”, which specifies the procedures and actions that they can competently undertake. The ACCC investigation found great variation between private health insurers in providing rebates for services within allied health occupations’ “scope of practice”.
Orthopaedic surgeons, for instance, are more likely than podiatric surgeons to be rebated for foot and ankle surgery; nutritionists are more likely than dietitians to get recognised for nutrition services; psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists are more likely than clinical hypnotherapists to be rebated for hypnotherapy; and physiotherapists are more likely to be funded for hand splints and orthoses than occupational therapists.
There’s overlap between the procedures of different professions, but the ACCC report shows that some registered professions are being excluded from rebates for services they can provide; while other professions performing similar services are recognised.
Getting private health rebates for services is a particularly important signifier of the value of health professions. The rebate indicates to the public that such a provider and their service is legitimate.
While it’s arguable that as long as a service is covered, it doesn’t matter who provides it, that fails to acknowledge that legitimacy in the form of rebates is critical to the growth of the diversity of occupations we need to tackle future health issues, such as chronic illness.
It also doesn’t acknowledge that not all Australians, particularly those in living in rural and remote areas, have a choice about who provides the services they need.
Lack of evidence
Insurer preferences entrench views about particular occupations in health that may not be based on research evidence. Such perceptions of legitimacy can have a cascading effect.
Even when there are rebated services for evidence-based interventions, our research on chronic diseases found doctors are less likely to refer to occupational therapists than physiotherapists, indicating that even health professionals may not be aware of the scope of practice of various allied health professions.
Health care is a competitive market. The ACCC noted that “the non-recognition of a category of allied health-care provider can affect the employment prospects and income of those providers”. This raises the question of how decisions about which providers to rebate are made.
Insurers claim that there are “common elements” of their decisions, which are:
- clinical efficacy of the service offered by the provider
- legal requirements relating to accreditation and registration
- the administrative costs to the insurer in recognising a provider and
- issues relating to member demand and expected cost of claims.
While consumer demand is important, according to the ACCC, “it can be difficult for consumers to identify the categories of allied health care provider recognised to provide a particular service covered under a PHI [private health insurance] product”.
Great expectations
Private health insurers seem to expect that consumers are aware of the scope of practice of the range of allied health professions. And, even more unrealistically, that consumers will know which therapies have an evidence base.
The selection of particular providers is not made transparent to consumers, and at the very least, calls for clearer communication about what providers and services are covered in health insurance policies.
Apart from reference to clinical efficacy of both services and providers as one of the factors taken into account, very little of the decisions appear to be based on evidence of benefit. Rebates for allied health services appear to be more of a commercial decision than linked to provision of best health care.
Similarly, the rebating of complementary and alternative health services by insurers indicates clinical efficacy may not be the primary driver of which services are rebated. The process behind rebates is not communicated clearly to consumers who may erroneously assume that rebated services have been found to produce health benefits.
In Australia, one of the key consequences of such disparity in service relates to access. If people in rural and remote areas don’t have ready access to an approved service provider, they can seek the services of another practitioner, but they will pay more, even if they also pay for private health insurance cover.
Australians need more information about what professions and services are rebated in private health insurance. And they need to know how rebates come to be assigned.
Karen Willis is a health sociologist and qualitative researcher at the University of Sydney. Lynette Mackenzie is Associate Professor, Occupational Therapy at the University of Sydney. Michelle Lincoln is Professor of Speech Pathology at the University of Sydney. Karen Willis receives funding from the Australian Research Council to investigate the topic of health care choice. Michelle Lincoln receives funding from NHMRC, ARC and FACHSIA.
This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.
Comments
3 responses to “How Private Health Insurance Can Reduce Your Treatment Choices”
Whaaa… First of all, podiatrists with masters degrees are not surgeons. By law, only someone with:
A) a medical degree
B) fellowship in a college of the appropriate specialty (99% of them belong to the Royal Australian College of Surgeons)
can call themselves a surgeon.
Podiatrists who perform operative procedures are performing way outside their scope of practice as they don’t have medical degrees and haven’t done the 5+ years of postgraduate training (plus many years of grovelling and brown nosing to onto said training) to become orthopaedic surgeons.
There’s a good reason they’re not being rebated, they’re not trained for operative procedures. End of story.
http://www.acps.edu.au/admission_training.php
It seems to be a specialist field that requires additional training beyond what a Podiatrist has. I based this on googling, reading the wikipedia page and the linked page so my evidence base is tiny.
Happy to hear further evidence, either way.
If even with said training they are still not as qualified as orthopaedic surgeons, that would be compelling.
The underlying issue is that they’re not doctors; they’re podiatrists with masters degrees. Orthopaedic surgeons are doctors, done their basic residency, done orthopaedic SET training +/- fellowships.
All up, assuming you go graduate high school at 17, go through UNSW’s/Bond’s 5yr med school programme (or some other equivalent 5yr undergrad programme, the shortest available in Australia) do 3 years of residency (since the AOA have changed the requirements to get onto the programme making it practically impossible for a PGY 2 to get on) then 5 yrs of SET, you’re looking at a 30yr old doctor with 8 years of clinical experience to become an orthopaedic surgeon (at a minimum, most orthopods are in their late 30’s or early 40’s by the time they’re done as they spend a few years doing unaccredited jobs, fellowships etc etc).
Have a read of the ACPS training, SET training is on a different playing field. ACPS is very loose in its definition of minimum training period. There’s no crazy exams along the way (exams with pass rates in the order of 60%, these are people who’ve graduated from med school by the way) and it’s shorter than 5 years. In fact, the way I read it it seems to be possible to do it in 3 years, but there’s no specified minimum time period so it’s hard to tell.
Podiatrists should not be allowed to perform surgery. Period. If they get medical degrees then that’s a different kettle of fish.
If you would like some night time reading, the college of surgeons website is here:
http://www.surgeons.org/
(not sure how the Australians managed to snag such a sweet domain name, but whatever)
or the Australian Orthopaedic Association’s website here:
http://www.aoa.org.au/
There’s a lot of underlying issues here; doctor’s don’t like other health professionals getting in on their business (even within different specialities there’s a lot of turf wars going on, even between the AOA and RACS alone who should, techincally, get along), and to a degree, there’s a lot of that going on here between podiatrists and orthopods.
At the end of the day though, when it comes to performing operations, you need to have gone to medical school. A bachelor of podiatry, masters degree and then post doctoral training just doesn’t cut it. They lack the clinical experience and surgical experience to perform surgeries. Could orthopods make it easier for the podiatrists gain said experience? Yes. Are they going to? No.
Also you have no idea on the rebate you’ll get if you go to a doctor (or other health professional) that isn’t on their partner list.
Their websites are hell confusing, some are overly simplified that you don’t know what you’re getting (or not getting) or laced in technical jargon that non-health professionals have no idea what they are talking about.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve not bothered to even get health insurance as I like to know what I’m getting, but have no idea what I would be getting – I’ve tried in the past to compare covers…but the whole thing makes me ill. It seems silly to spend $70 a month on health insurance when I’m young, healthy and haven’t been sick (as in a cold or other illness) in years.