If you're a fellow Australian, I'd be surprised if this topic hasn't come up. The APA has been pushing the government for years to allow patients to see a physio without a referral and have that session covered by Medicare. This was brought up in parliament about 2 months ago and there hasn't been much progress since.

If you're a foreigner, here's the background: Here in Australia, seeing a physiotherapist requires you to go to a GP and get a referral, otherwise you pay for the whole thing out of pocket ( /- partial refund by private health insurance). This leads to a lot of seemingly pointless Dr visits as GPs essentially become gate keepers for accessing physio. You also cannot get more than 5 sessions per year in most cases.

The question: If physios were to become the first point-of-contact for the 20-30% of patients who have musculoskeletal complaints, what would happen? I'm a final year student and nearly every supervisor I've had has discussed this; some opinions include:

• It's great because we'll make tonnes more money and see patients when they need us.
• It would only work if physio can also refer to bulk-billed MRIs and refer to other specialities, otherwise we'll still depend on GPs
• Many clinics will opt-out of taking these patients and become private-only (just as many medical centres do now). If this becomes too widespread, it won't actually solve the problem
• It's a good thing but physios needs far more pharmacological and medical training to be the first point of contact (A GP I'm friends with told me this).

I'm mostly of the second opinion but I want to hear from those of you with more experience.