Health funds say they have evidence suggesting some public hospitals are admitting members as private patients only to have a junior doctor treat them.
Health funds are calling on federal health minister Greg Hunt to use the government's new data-matching powers to stop public hospitals from rorting patients with private health insurance by allowing inexperienced doctors to treat them instead of their chosen specialist.
"We have anecdotal evidence that specialist provider numbers are being used by junior doctors at the insistence of the hospital to process more patients and get more private patients through the door," she said.Mr Hunt told Parliament in October his department had found "instances of fraudulent Medicare billing where either the doctor or the patient for a service billed to Medicare was actually out of the country when the service was supposed to have been provided".
A spokesman for the minister said the Morrison government would pursue "hospital admission arrangements that ensure that public hospitals do not induce patients to use their private health insurance when they are entitled to receive the same care for free".
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