Greens move Senate motion on dental scheme

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale (Victoria) has given notice of a motion concerning the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme. His motion is:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) Medicare has completed audits of 89 dentists who accessed the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme,

(ii) a further 540 audits are still underway,

(iii) of the completed audits, only 12 were found to be for the non-provision of claimed services, (iv) of the remaining audits found to be non-compliant, non-compliance is in most cases of a technical and administrative nature, whereby the practitioner failed to provide a written quote to the patient or a treatment summary to the referring doctor in a timely fashion, and

(v) claims for full repayment of services delivered under Medicare to the community may result in undue hardship to dental practitioners who acted in good faith; and

(b) calls on the Government to waive its right to the repayment of debts incurred by dental practitioners as a result of a Medicare audit where:

(i) all services claimed were rendered properly and in good faith to eligible patients, and

(ii) the nature of the non-compliance was purely administrative in nature.