OA wants the government to also rove the six-year freeze on indexation of Medicare rebates for optometrical consultations that is to last until July 2018 (it commenced in 2013).
That means that while costs of providing eye care continue to rise, the patient rebate will not be indexed for approaching six years.
OA says that together those two changes are likely to mean the average patient rebate for a consultation by an optometrist will be $10 less in 2018 than it was in 2014, which threatens patient access to care and isn’t sustainable for practices.
OA says it is asking all optometrists to:
– Print a copy of the petition;
– Print a copy of the practice poster which promotes and explains the petition for patients;
– Display the poster and the petition prominently in their practices;
– Discuss the petition with patients and encourage practice staff to also do so; and
– Support staff should feel confident in these discussion (for suggestions on how to easily and effectively raise the issue with patients, see ‘Suggested Practice Scripts’.
OA says to maximise patient consideration of the petition, petition pages should be replaced regularly, which helps ensure signatures aren’t lost and the counter retains its neat appearance.
Furthermore, it says try to ensure each copy of the petition always has a few signatures; people are more likely to sign when others have, and ployee optometrists should be encouraged to chat with ployers about the need to support the petition.
“Finally, it’s important we get as many signatures as possible. So that your patients’ signatures count, we need to receive the signed petition pages by 25 Septber.
“To table a petition in the House of Representatives all signatures must be originals. That means we must ask you to return all signed petitions to us by Australia Post. To help ensure that we receive th, we suggest you post as Registered Post or Express Post to:
Petition Coordinator, Optometry Australia, 204 Drummond St, Carlton VIC 3053.
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