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HealthLink reveals new subscription fees
The provider has sent out alerts about the incoming fees to many GPs and practices, with costs for larger clinics listed at $1000 a year.
Communication from HealthLink indicates that the new paid subscription model will start on 1 February 2025.
Australia’s dominant electronic health messaging provider, HealthLink, is set to roll out a new paid subscription model for users early next year, according to an email sent to many practices across Australia.
In the correspondence, HealthLink says that from 1 February 2025, it will be ‘harmonising our subscription model for general practice … to ensure it is cost effective and scalable to meet the needs of both big and small clinics’.
For small practices with one to three GPs, this will see a new fee of $252 a year, medium-sized practices with four to 10 GPs will pay $600, and larger practices with 11 to 20 GPs will pay $1000 a year.
For any practices with more than 21 GPs, labelled as an enterprise, the pricing will be ‘subject to practice size and usage’.
‘This will mean that charges for each practice will be based on the number of practising doctors at the clinic,’ it states.
So far, practices in New South Wales and Western Australian have received notification of the changes from HealthLink.
RACGP President Dr Michael Wright told newsGP he is ‘really concerned about new and increasing fees being imposed on practices at a time when they are are already weighed down with high costs and increased bureaucracy’.
‘It’s another hit to the costs of running a general practice at a time when inadequate Medicare rebates are already hurting the financial viability of practices,’ he said.
‘This new cost seems opportunistic given that many state health services have begun requiring this system to be used – the last thing we need is for these increasing costs to drive GPs back from the shift to digital health that we have been leading, that is bad for patients, and bad for the efficiency of our health system.
‘HealthLink now has a virtual monopoly on secure messaging in most parts of Australia and increasingly HealthLink services are being more and more widely used.
‘This feels like opportunistic behaviour in a non-competitive market, these increased costs are either going to have to be passed on to patients, worsen the viability of practices, or result in us shifting back from digital health – none of these are good options for general practices or our patients.’
HealthLink did not respond to newsGP’s request for comment by deadline, but in its email to clinics it confirmed that in early 2025, managers will receive an invitation to the HealthLink payment portal for invoice details.
Dr Rob Hosking, Chair of the RACGP Expert Committee – Practice and Technology Management, said he was particularly concerned that GPs will be required to pay if they need to send referrals to public government-funded hospitals.
‘That doesn’t seem right to me,’ he told newsGP.
‘A number of hospitals are now requiring us to use HealthLink, and some state governments are requiring people to use HealthLink.
‘It’s effectively a tax to participate in hospital referrals, so that’s very disappointing – particularly when we’re being held ransomed by a private company.’
Dr Hosking said he was also unsure why this has been done ‘with no consultation with the profession’.
‘As far as I’m aware, I’ve had no communication,’ he said.
The HealthLink email confirms there will be no charge for administration staff or nurses.
‘For 25 years, we’ve worked closely with software partners to ensure that over 100 million secure messages are exchanged annually between general practitioners, specialists, hospitals, and diagnostic services,’ it reads.
The email also details that the company will be investing further in standards such as the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR, and is in ‘close collaboration in initiatives such as the Sparked Program with the CSIRO’.
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