A new Federal Government report shows the volume of optometry services utilised under Medicare decreased sharply during lockdowns – down by 20.1% compared to the same time last year – for two notable reasons.
The significant drop has been highlighted in the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) latest quarterly report on the impacts of COVID-19 on Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
The report compares data for the first quarter of 2021–22 (the quarter ending September 2021) with the preceding quarter (the quarter ending June 2021) and with the same quarter from the previous year (the quarter ending September 2020).
One of the reasons cited for the sharp decrease in optometry services was that during the quarter ending June 2020, a large number of optometry practices were closed. According to the report, services were down 38.4% on the March quarter 2020, but this decrease was picked up in the September quarter 2020.
“The fall in optometry services in the September quarter 2021 compared to the September quarter 2020 was due to the high base in the September quarter 2020,” the report said.
Furthermore, during lockdowns optometry practices could remain open but were limited to essential or time critical care to patients (as opposed to routine check-ups) in many cases.
In contrast to GP attendances and pathology services, the service volumes in many broad type of service categories fell.
The categories experiencing the largest falls compared with the quarter ending June 2021 were optometry (down by 22.3% to 1.9 million services), other allied health (down by 5.4% to 4.0 million services) and diagnostic imaging (down by 4.9% to 7.3 million services).
“These falls can be attributed to COVID-19 lockdowns in New South Wales, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory, and patients deferring non-urgent allied health attendances and diagnostic imaging,” the AIHW report states.
“The biggest decrease [compared with the quarter ending September 2020] was in optometry (down by 20.1%), which was heavily impacted by lockdowns as optometrists were generally limited to only providing essential or time critical services to patients.”
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