PSR Annual Report 2008-09

• Contents
• Letter of Transmittal
• Director’s Report
• 1. Agency overview
• 2. Report on performance
• 3. Case descriptions
  • Practitioners referred
  • Issues identified
  • Decisions to take no further action
  • Negotiated agreements
  • PSR Committees
  • Legal cases
• 4. Management and accountability
• Appendix 1 PSR’s resource statement and outcome summary, 2008–09
• Appendix 2 Financial statements
• Appendix 3 Freedom of information statement
• Glossary and indexes

Previous | Next

3. Case descriptions

Issues identified

Medicare Australia’s requests to PSR to review cases include the issues of concern identified during Medicare Australia’s processes. PSR’s processes may identify further concerns.

The issues identified (see Table 6) in PSR cases this year generally related to:

• inappropriate use of MBS attendance items
• inappropriate use of diagnostic imaging and pathology
• inappropriate use of MBS procedural items
• inappropriate prescribing
• practice unacceptable to the general body of practitioners.

Table 5: Specialty/profession of practitioners referred to PSR, 2008–09

Specialty/profession	No.
Consultant physician	3
Dermatologist	1
Ear, nose and throat surgeon	1
General/medical practitioner	119
Neurologist	1
Ophthalmologist	2
Optometrist	4
Plastic surgeon	1
Psychiatrist	3
Radiologist	1
Total	136

Table 6: Issues identified in PSR cases, 2008–09

Inappropriate use of MBS attendance items	Inappropriate use of general practitioner long and prolonged consultation items Inappropriate use of specialist attendance items with a procedure Inappropriate use of optometric attendance items Misuse of Team Care Arrangements by general practitioners as a means of allied health referral Inappropriate use of general practitioner afterhours MBS items
Inappropriate use of diagnostic imaging and pathology	CT scans initiated without clinical justification Misuse of pathology items, in particular ordering pathology in a ‘scattergun’ manner without regard to clinical requirements Unjustified repetition of expensive pathology
Inappropriate use of MBS procedural items	Inappropriate use of vascular diagnostic items by walk-in clinics Excessive use of skin flap items when not clinically indicated Inappropriate use of gastroenterological investigations
Inappropriate prescribing	Inappropriate use of narcotics Inappropriate use of benzodiazepine drugs Inappropriate use of antibiotics
Practice unacceptable to the general body of practitioners	Deficient or illegible clinical records Use of alternative treatments unacceptable to the general body of practitioners Care found to potentially threaten the life or health of a patient

Previous | Next