DVA is working hard to ensure veterans, and veteran families receive health care that is of the highest standards.
We’ve recently made updates to DVA’s Provider Notes - a set of official documents that outlines health provider responsibilities, including how they should conduct activities and make decisions when treating DVA clients.
The updates reflect the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s requirement for doctors, specialists or other health practitioners to disclose to you, when recommending or referring you to another provider, service or products if they have a commercial or other interest.
We’ve made this update following growing concerns that some health practitioners are making unnecessary referrals or recommendations to ‘specific’ providers for financial gain, as well as reports of advocates being offered ’spotter fees’ to refer veterans to specific medical providers.
We want veterans to be aware of these risks and feel empowered to ask questions. If you are ever unsure about why a particular referral is being made or suspect something doesn’t seem right, you have the right to speak up.
These practices are not in the best interests of the veteran community. Undisclosed relationships between providers puts profits ahead of the wellbeing of veterans. This undermines trust in the system and compromises clinical independence.
We are taking firm action to address this kind of behaviour, including through education, deregistration, referral to relevant regulatory or professional bodies, debt recovery and criminal prosecution. DVA may deregister providers for serious non-compliance, making them ineligible to provide services and treatments to DVA clients. We may make public statements about this, including naming deregistered providers to increase public awareness. We may contact you to confirm that you received the services a provider has claimed for. We could also ask if the provider told you about their commercial interests in other providers, services or products they referred you to. If you have concerns about provider conduct in relation to DVA services, we encourage you to make a confidential report to fraud.tipoff@dva.gov.au
We recognise that most providers are doing the right thing. We thank them for supporting veterans with integrity and professionalism.
The updated Provider Notes are available on the DVA website: Notes for Allied Health Providers (Section One – General) and Notes for General Practitioners