Mount Evelyn
Tuesday, 23 August, 2022
Costs cut to help young drivers
Montrose ambo reaches dream role
Market returns to post covid normality
BOOK WEEK: Author reveal his favourite reads
PAGE 4
PAGE 7
PAGE 9
PAGES 14-15
A Star News Group Publication
Phone: 5957 3700 Trades and Classifieds: 1300 666 808
12496493-NG22-21
Aiding energy poverty Last week Grade 6 students at Mount Evelyn’s Birmingham Primary School spent the day learning about energy poverty and how a simple solar light can be the difference in a child getting an education. Learning to build these solar powered lights themselves gave students a hands-on experience on how energy works and enabled them to personalise the gift that would be sent to another person somewhere in the world. To find out more about the students’ experiences, turn to page 5 Birmingham Primary School Grade 6 students were overjoyed to have completed their building of SolarBuddy lights to be sent to countries experiencing energy poverty. Picture: MIKAYLA VAN LOON
Bulk billing cuts “They’ve obviously increased to 1.6 per cent, but the rate of inflation is six per cent. On top of that, under the health professionals award, all the staff were given about 4.5 to 5.1 per cent increase, which is something that we have to give.” In the last six months alone, Dr Kumar said his clinics have seen a 10 per cent rise in expenses, not even including other services, something that is “unsustainable” without charging a fee. This was a common response when HealthEd undertook a survey of 500 GP clinics across the country. Of those clinics 22 per cent had changed
their billing model, with one third moving to mixed billing and 67 per cent moving to private billing. Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) president Karen Price said these figures were heading in the wrong direction and unless the government can boost funding to GPs, more clinics will have to pass the fees to patients. “That is not a decision taken lightly and no one relishes the thought of asking their patients to pay more, particularly those struggling to make ends meet at a time of increased grocery and fuel costs just to name a few,” she said. Continued page 3
12563842-ET34-22
General practitioner (GP) clinics across Australia have been making the move from bulk billing to private billing, a trend that has started to occur in the Yarra Ranges as costs increase. Lilydale Doctors and Mount Evelyn Doctors owner Dr Binay Kumar attempted to delay the change from bulk billing to mixed private billing as long as possible but had to make the difficult decision that came into effect as of 1 August to charge $30 per visit. “Everyone knows inflation has gone up tremendously, everything is more expensive but probably what no one knows is for us Medi-
care rebates, for GP’s, were frozen from 2014 to 2020,” Dr Kumar said. “So for six or seven years, we didn’t really have any increase at all in any rebate that we were getting.” The Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) noted the indexation rate as at 1 July 2021 as 0.9 per cent. Dr Kumar said this has now been lifted to 1.6 per cent as at July 2022 but still cannot help cover the ever increasing costs of materials, utilities and wages. “Over the years, we’ve been absorbing the cost. Every year the living expenses increase, the staff wages increase but our MBS rebates don’t increase for six, seven years,” he said.
Remedial Massage Now Available at Mount Evelyn Physio - Massage - Strength - Pilates - www.formandpractice.com.au -
9736 2565 12443008-SG10-20
12548483-JW20-22
By Mikayla van Loon