Welcome to our annual Christmas update

So here it is, Merry Christmas! Another year has flown by.

In November, we brought you a full update on activities across our services, so I thought I’d make our Christmas message a bit different this year and tell you more about some of the other things I and Synapse have been up to.

Firstly, I’d like to tell you about two pro-bono projects that we’ve been working on for the last few years, one of which has recently come to fruition.

As a medical billing legal expert, I am asked to do all sorts of interesting projects. Everything from being an expert witness in criminal prosecutions and integrity commission inquiries, through to doing billing audits as part of due diligence processes in the context of corporate acquisitions. There is never a dull moment.

But one day a few years ago an ex-prisoner reached out to me to ask if I would help him in the area of enabling Medicare for prisoners. Two years later, we have published an academic article with a third author who is a legal aid lawyer. Our article took over a year to finalise and was accepted for publication in a leading journal with no changes – we were all on the floor! It has been one of the most rewarding projects of my career and a real privilege working with an amazing group of human rights lawyers and activists. Our findings will surprise everyone and go a long way to improving prisoners’ access to health and mental health services. It might even assist in dropping the rates of deaths in custody. I would have loved to share a link with you but there isn’t one just yet so watch this space. I think there will be some media coverage coming soon.

The second project which brings us no end of joy is our telehealth for the bush project which morphed into a huge multi-year grant funded project. This brings Synapse services to a large group of vulnerable and underprivileged people living in remote Australia. Synapse provides in kind support for the project so does not receive any of the grant funding. We don’t want it. It is simply the right thing to do. Right now, we are about two years in supporting the Gawa Homeland on Elcho Island and have made amazing progress. I visited Gawa and spent a week working as the medical receptionist while we ran a clinic, which was rewarding, sorely needed and heaps of fun. Delivering health services out there is hard. As our doctor said, “the medicine’s not hard, it’s the service delivery that’s hard.”

The Gawa community are wonderful people. We know them well now and they reach out when someone is unwell, which is great. We’ve even got someone who desperately needs their tonsils out on the public wait list in Darwin at last. Little victories mean a lot. The entire project team is confident we will achieve a sustainable service delivery model without Medicare. At my suggestion, we are going to lead by example and NOT ask for a new MBS item or items, but instead, count and cost the work properly using SNOMED-CT codes and seek alternate long-term funding.

Finally, I suppose I can’t really get away without at least mentioning some of my frequent appearances in the media in 2024. As an expert, I am approached by the media to comment on issues related to billing and I think it’s reasonable that I provide expert comment when appropriate. While no-one bats an eyelid when other experts comment about their area of expertise, that does not seem to be the case with me and medical billing.

So, the backlash when I comment about unpalatable truths like illegal billing practices, has been uncomfortable, misjudged and alarming at times, but the playbook is predictable, and I have no intention of stopping this important work. Synapse has always focused on improving payment integrity and transparency because we know that getting the billing right is part of delivering a better health system for all Australians.

As a result of the payment integrity work, we are regularly approached by patients who need help understanding their billing or simply want to tell us of their bad experiences to do with Medicare misuse. We also do this work for free and enjoy it very much. I help patients get their rebates, sort through their Medicare, private health and hospital records and identify illegal billing. I believe that every Synapse client reading this would do the same if you could see what I unfortunately see.

Making billing clear to patients is so valued, they are so thankful for the transparency. We are proud that Synapse services are again at the forefront of improving consumer experiences and knowledge of the health system.

So that’s all from us for 2024. I want to thank all our clients for your support and co-operation throughout the year. The feedback our team receives is so encouraging and we will continue in our endeavours to improve everything we do in 2025.

Thanks for reading and we wish you all a wonderful festive season. We will be open throughout with reduced staff so if you have any questions please contact us in the usual way.

Speak in 2025.

From Margaret and the Synapse team
enquiries@synapsemedical.com.au