Luke S-C Woon, Stephen Allison, Tarun Bastiampillai, Steve Kisely, Paul Maguire, William Pring, Rebecca Reay, Jeffrey Cl Looi
OBJECTIVE: Telepsychiatry items in the Australian Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) were expanded following the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their out-of-pocket costs have not been examined. We describe and compare patient out-of-pocket payments for face-to-face and telepsychiatry (videoconferencing and telephone) MBS items for outpatient psychiatric services to understand the differential out-of-pocket cost burden for patients across these modalities. METHODS: out-of-pocket cost information was obtained from the Medical Costs Finder website, which extracted data from Services Australia's Medicare claims data in 2021-2022...
March 4, 2024: Australasian Psychiatry: Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists