4. Equip practitioners with pricing tools
• Develop education or templates to support fee explanation and documentation
5. Encourage electronic claiming adoption
• Provide guidance on adopting HICAPS / HealthPoint systems
6. Co-design future advocacy
• Invite interested members into working groups to help shape code design, policy input, and fund consultations
Limitations
A limitation of this survey is the low response rate. However, many respondents were naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners who were directly affected by the removal of health fund rebates for their services in 2019. It is likely that, although emailed to all members, this survey reports the views of those most interested in providing comment on ATMS’ advocacy for health fund rebates for naturopaths and herbal medicine practitioners.
Conclusion
This survey confirms that those ATMS practitioners who responded to the survey are experienced practitioners who provide lengthy consultations to assist clients with complex care needs, including women’ s health, gut and digestive health and mental health. There is strong consensus for simplified item coding, the rejection of GP gatekeeping, and the need to reflect modern, multi-modality service delivery in health fund models.
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