Departmental logo
No images

THE HON NICOLA ROXON MP

Former Minister for Health and Ageing

Patients Win as Nurses and Midwives Access Medicare and the PBS

Print page  Decrease text size  Increase text size


Nurse Practitioners and Midwives will from 1 November be able to access the Medicare Benefits Schedule and provide Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines in the community.

PDF printable version of Patients Win as Nurses and Midwives Access Medicare and the PBS (PDF 20 KB)

1 November 2010

Nurse Practitioners and Midwives will from today be able to access the Medicare Benefits Schedule and provide Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines in the community.

For the first time highly skilled Nurse Practitioners and Midwives will be able to provide taxpayer subsidised services to patients outside of the public system in medical practices and the community.

This is a momentous day for the nursing and midwifery professions and a great day for patients who will be able to claim a rebate, and benefit from better access, closer to home in a wider range of settings.

Nurse practitioners - registered nurses who have a high level of formal education and extensive experience – will be able to provide front line services to patients who would otherwise always need to see their general practitioner.

Midwives will be able to deliver maternity care, including antenatal and postnatal care in the community, and undertake deliveries in a hospital.

The Government has made significant investments in these initiatives, though:

  • $59.7 million over four years to enable nurse practitioners to access relevant new items under the MBS and to prescribe certain medicines under the PBS.
  • $66.6 M for expanding MBS and PBS support for eligible midwives with an additional $25 M for access to Professional Indemnity Insurance for these midwives.
Previously, Nurse Practitioners could provide advanced level care but because of their lack of access to the MBS and PBS had severely limited roles outside the hospital setting.

This will broaden and encourage the range of settings in which Nurse Practitioners are able to work and will give patients more choice in their primary health care provider.

Nurses and Midwives will be required to work in collaboration with medical practitioners when providing MBS services and PBS prescriptions.

Note: Nurse Practitioners and Midwives are still required to act within constraints set out under their relevant State or Territory legislation.

For all media inquiries, please contact the Minister's Office on 02 6277 7220

Help with accessing large documents

When accessing large documents (over 500 KB in size), it is recommended that the following procedure be used:

  1. Click the link with the RIGHT mouse button
  2. Choose "Save Target As.../Save Link As..." depending on your browser
  3. Select an appropriate folder on a local drive to place the downloaded file

Attempting to open large documents within the browser window (by left-clicking) may inhibit your ability to continue browsing while the document is opening and/or lead to system problems.

Help with accessing PDF documents

To view PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, you will need to have a PDF reader installed on your computer. A number of PDF readers are available through the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) Web Guide website.