HealthLink pauses fee rollout

Electronic health messaging provider HealthLink has pressed pause on its plans to charge GPs for subscriptions to its service following a meeting with the RACGP.
 
Last month, HealthLink’s sudden announcement of new fees came as a shock to GPs, who received a notification of the new charges – which were initially scheduled to start on 1 February 2025.
 
As one of Australia’s most predominant providers in this space, the move immediately caused alarm among the general practice community who rely on that service for hospital and specialist referrals.
 
In response, the RACGP sat down with HealthLink on Thursday to pass on these concerns, with the meeting ultimately ending with an agreement to pause the plan and further consult with the profession.
 
RACGP President Dr Michael Wright thanked HealthLink for offering to ‘pause any changes and consult with us and its clients on a solution’.
 
‘Digital health initiatives are critical for general practice and helping to improve the health of Australians, but GPs need support for universal uptake,’ he said.
 
‘After decades of underfunding of Medicare, what we really don’t need is unexpected additional costs.’
 
In a statement, HealthLink said its ‘priority is to make sure GPs can provide the most efficient and cybersecure service when it comes to their patient’s health data’.
 
But it did not rule out upcoming changes to its model, saying it will be ‘seeking to introduce a robust contract and subscription model for all GP practices’.
 
‘This model will include all of our premium service offerings, such as comprehensive message inclusions and validation, provider directory access, SmartForms access to key national and state referral pathways and round-the-clock support,’ it stated.
 
But HealthLink said they had heard ‘the concerns from our GPs’ and how the proposed changes would apply ‘to practices and various working challenges, such as part time doctors’.
 
‘Following this announcement of our intent we have paused the rollout of this new model while we explore all options and undergo a period of consultation over the coming months with stakeholders,’ it said.
 
Under its initial idea to ‘harmonise’ its subscription model, HealthLink planned for small practices with one to three GPs to pay a fee of $252 a year, medium-sized practices with four to 10 GPs to pay $600, and larger practices with 11 to 20 GPs to pay $1000 a year.
 
These fees came despite the organisation receiving millions of dollars in state government funding to provide its service, including more than $4 million from the New South Wales Government alone.
 
In response, Dr Rob Hosking, Chair of RACGP – Practice and Technology Management Expert Committee, told newsGP said HealthLink’s fee pause was a positive sign but there will need to be more discussions moving forward.
 
‘We have to work with HealthLink and government to get a suitable result, because we want to encourage people to use secure messaging systems and putting an extra cost on, that will discourage people from using those systems,’ he said.
 
‘We’ve got to try to figure out how they can sustain their business model and how we can continue to use secure messaging systems.’
 
Overall, he said HealthLink was a good system that he would like to see expanded – without it being at the expense of GPs.
 
‘At the moment, there’s still a lot of specialists and GPs who are using fax and unencrypted email, so not secure email, whereas the HealthLink system is a very secure system,’ he said.
 
There are also bigger things at play, Dr Hosking said, including developments within the Federal Government’s Health Information Exchange system being developed by the Australian Digital Health Agency.
 
‘I would hope that HealthLink will be working with them to get their product involved in that different way of transferring information, so that information follows a patient wherever they are in the health system,’ he said.
 
But Dr Hosking said these changes are still a few years away, so retaining access to HealthLink remains important, but there is a pressing need to increase software system interoperability more broadly.
 
‘What would be even better is if we could get all these systems to work together,’ he said.
 
‘It’s a bit silly that we’re still, 15 years down the track when we first started talking about interoperability of these secure messaging systems, we haven’t got there.’
 
Concluding its statement, HealthLink said it would ‘provide updates once the consultation period ends, and we are clear on next steps’.
 
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