Page 3032 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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(4) Facility fees are not linked to a fee or charge determination. Facility fees revenue is generated from charges to the salaried specialists for use of the Health facilities as per their Medical Officers Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA). The percentage of fees charged is by the Medicare Benefits Schedule item number for the service that has been provided by the specialist and also by the employment or craft group scheme that the specialist has elected as nominated in the EBA.
(5) Similar fees are charged in other states (also in accordance with EBAs) and these are considered with each EBA negotiation.
(6) The highly specialised drugs are those drugs which are subsidised by the Commonwealth under Section 100 of the National Health Act for outpatients or day-only patients but are required to be prescribed and dispensed in a hospital with the associated clinical specialty. The highly specialised drugs (there are currently 80 drugs listed on the program) are purchased by Canberra Hospital at the price determined by the PBS, and then a claim is lodged at the end of each month for reimbursement for the previous month’s expenditure. The’ fee’ charged for each prescription is the PBS co-payment which is a patient co-contribution set by the Commonwealth for any PBS subsidised medicine. The Directorate does not determine the fee. The indexed PBS patient co-payment and safety net amounts are determined at the beginning of each calendar year by the Commonwealth. The general outpatient contribution rate at public hospitals is set at 80% of the general PBS co-payment rate (currently $28.30 for each prescription) and the concessional patient co-payment is the same as in the community ($5.80 per prescription). The Commonwealth deducts an amount from the reimbursement paid to the States for highly specialised drugs to cover the co-payment collected. The States have an agreement with the Commonwealth to ‘administer’ the highly specialised drugs program, which is at a cost to the State because of the staff required to purchase, dispense, lodge the claims and administer the program. This would equate to approximately three full time pharmacy staff at Canberra Hospital.
(7) A number of processes are being put in place to address the previous data processing, validation and acquittal concerns in relation to records of service provided to NSW residents. The ACT and NSW are working to implement and improve on these process to ensure improved data quality. The Directorate’s aim is to have agreement with NSW to allow acquittal of the outstanding years by 30 June 2012.
(8) As at 30 June 2011, the ACT estimates it was owed $16.4m by NSW for Cross Border Health services for non-disputed activity. The final amount is subject to negotiations on disputed data currently underway and for this reason (and because the actual level of activity is not yet known) it is not yet practical to estimate an amount owing to the end of 2011-12.
(9) No. There is no provision in the agreement to allow for the charging of interest.
(10) No, the Cross Border Agreement is not a publicly available document. A copy of the agreement is attached.
(11) Yes.
(a) The Health Directorate has a range of mechanisms in place to minimise the risks associated with medical malpractice indemnity. This work includes:
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