Speaker 1: I'll get at Welcome to another installing the You project.
Speaker 1: It's the seventh of January, as I sit here in
Speaker 1: the bloody office here in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne,
Speaker 1: just slowly stepping back into the studio and slowly regaining
Speaker 1: a little bit of momentum, coming out of the hammock
Speaker 1: and the jacuzzi and having grown up conversations in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five with grown ups. Now. A grown up that
Speaker 1: I talk to every two weeks, sometimes once a week,
Speaker 1: but typically every two weeks is David James, Kevin Patrick,
Speaker 1: Brian Gillespie, his son James, who's better looking and smarter,
Speaker 1: not quite as access not quite as accessible. He's joined
Speaker 1: me today, not filling in for his old man, but
Speaker 1: just here in his own rights, have a really interesting
Speaker 1: chat about something that is relevant for all ozsies. Get
Speaker 1: I mate, how are you not bad?
Speaker 2: Craig. It's going to be on with you again.
Speaker 1: Do you like that intro? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, it's the run. I would say.
Speaker 3: If you're struggling to get out of the havoc and
Speaker 3: jacuzzi in Melbourne coming out of the holidays, you got
Speaker 3: to move up to the Sunshine Coast. Craig, you never
Speaker 3: have to get out of the havoc and jacuzy up here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know your old man's always telling me a
Speaker 1: version of that. I don't, I don't know. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we're all very parochial. We all love well, we don't
Speaker 1: all love where we live. But I do love the
Speaker 1: Sunshine State. But as someone who has had I would
Speaker 1: say about sixteen or seventeen skin cancers cut off, I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't. I probably shouldn't relocate it.
Speaker 3: Looks it really is a bit of a double edged
Speaker 3: sword up here. You've got to be careful with that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, if you're if you're, if you are looking
Speaker 3: to get more cut out Craig, and this is the
Speaker 3: place to be.
Speaker 1: But yeah, look I'll take that under advisement. I'll probably
Speaker 1: take a hard pass at this point in time. But
Speaker 1: if I review that, I'll get back to you. Thanks
Speaker 1: for your terrible advice. All right, now, let's just quickly
Speaker 1: let's dive in. So rather than me give a bio
Speaker 1: or me try to talk about clean Bill or the
Speaker 1: Blue Report, just tell my audience as quick or as
Speaker 1: slowly as you want, mate, who you are, what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and what's coming out next week as well. We're recording
Speaker 1: next week, but by the time this goes live, it'll
Speaker 1: be out.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, So.
Speaker 3: I might give a little bit of a longer version
Speaker 3: of events, if that's all right, Gray, Yeah, sure, and
Speaker 3: take everyone back to the start. So I grew up
Speaker 3: in Queensland and I was studying commerce law at university
Speaker 3: at the University of Queensland back in twenty sixteen. And
Speaker 3: while I was studying there, I was working as a
Speaker 3: teacher ade at a primary school and one Monday I
Speaker 3: came into the staff room and the pe teacher was
Speaker 3: laid out on the floor stretching. She'd injured herself over
Speaker 3: the weekend. She injured her back, but more than being
Speaker 3: concerned about the injury itself, she was concerned about getting
Speaker 3: someone to take a look at it. She was new
Speaker 3: to the areas, she didn't have a regular GP and
Speaker 3: as a working professional, she didn't have time during the
Speaker 3: day to find every single GP clinic around her and
Speaker 3: then call them all during business hours to see if
Speaker 3: they would take her on as a new patient and
Speaker 3: whether or not they would bill.
Speaker 2: Her and Craig. I was kind of shocked by that.
Speaker 3: It seemed insane to me that one of the most
Speaker 3: important relationships that people have in their lives, the relationship
Speaker 3: that they have with their local doctor, could be suck.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen sixties, you know, where people were still
Speaker 3: looking things up in the Yellow Pages and making calls
Speaker 3: during business hours.
Speaker 2: Just about everything else is online.
Speaker 3: I couldn't imagine that that was the one thing that
Speaker 3: had held off and was still not online. So I
Speaker 3: went home and I did a bit of research, and
Speaker 3: I found that that actually was the case. People still
Speaker 3: the most efficient way to find a doctor was to
Speaker 3: just look up in the Yellow Pages and give them
Speaker 3: all a call.
Speaker 2: And that seemed saying to me.
Speaker 3: So I used the ample Utia holidays that I had
Speaker 3: at the time and started calling up doctors myself and
Speaker 3: building lists of all of the doctors in a given
Speaker 3: area and getting their pricing and availability information, and then
Speaker 3: I put it all up on a directory called Mind
Speaker 3: the Gap, and the directory is completely free, and the
Speaker 3: idea behind it was that people could go on anytime
Speaker 3: the day or night, see every single GP clinic or
Speaker 3: dental clinic or specialist around them, and then filter them
Speaker 3: by the price of their basic services. And it worked
Speaker 3: pretty well for a time. But it was very small
Speaker 3: scale because it was just me doing it. I didn't
Speaker 3: have any money or anything, and yeah, I didn't have.
Speaker 3: It was just whatever I was able to get done
Speaker 3: in my unique holidays. And so when I finished Union,
Speaker 3: it kind of slowed down a little bit. But then
Speaker 3: I went to work as a grad in my first
Speaker 3: year out of UNI, and in this role, I I
Speaker 3: met up with with a bloke named Joel who taught
Speaker 3: me a little bit about programming and a little bit
Speaker 3: about how to use Excel a little bit more efficiently,
Speaker 3: and a light bulb kind of went off in my mind,
Speaker 3: and so I used the COVID lockdown to teach myself
Speaker 3: a little bit of programming, and I put together a
Speaker 3: new website called clean Build that used the best of the.
Speaker 2: Programming that I'd learned as well.
Speaker 3: As my full time salary to pay teams of callers
Speaker 3: to do the calling that I was doing previously by myself.
Speaker 3: And at the start of twenty twenty three, I released
Speaker 3: clean Belle's first ever Blue.
Speaker 2: Report, which was.
Speaker 3: A report into the statistics we put together by listing
Speaker 3: every single GP clinic we could find across all of
Speaker 3: Australias capital cities and the whole of the Northern territory
Speaker 3: of the Act and Pasmania. So it was a huge undertaking,
Speaker 3: but we were the first to go out and do
Speaker 3: this comprehensive calling and it forms the basis of the
Speaker 3: listings on the website. And so when we put this
Speaker 3: report out, we called it the Blue Report and just
Speaker 3: released it. And the idea behind it, really, Craig, was
Speaker 3: just to try to get people get awareness out there
Speaker 3: of the website, of help people find the website and
Speaker 3: find the free resource that it provided. But it created
Speaker 3: something of a storm. There was a lot of interest because,
Speaker 3: as you would know, bolk billing rates have been going down.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have seen that in their communities.
Speaker 3: They weren't necessarily seeing it in the statistics that were
Speaker 3: being published by the government, and our report was the
Speaker 3: first one that really captured what it was like to
Speaker 3: try to find a bulk billing clinic.
Speaker 2: In your community that and so we kept doing that.
Speaker 3: Each year we've gone out, we've called towards the end
Speaker 3: of each year, we've called every single GP clinic we're
Speaker 3: able to find across the country, and then in January
Speaker 3: of the following year released the Blue Report that reports
Speaker 3: on what's happened in the previous year to both bolk
Speaker 3: billing rates and out of pocket costs if you're looking
Speaker 3: at every single GP clinic across the country. And that's
Speaker 3: what this year's Blue Report does. It's our third annual
Speaker 3: Blue Report, and it reports on what's happened since since
Speaker 3: the start of twenty twenty three to both billing and
Speaker 3: out of pocket costs across the country.
Speaker 1: A couple of things. I want to know why the
Speaker 1: Blue Report? What does that mean? Where did that name
Speaker 1: come from?
Speaker 3: Oh, you're gonna laughs. It's because Kleingvill's logo is blue. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the teeth as it goes.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, that's that's the reason, Vie.
Speaker 1: That's all right. But it's like I always wonder about,
Speaker 1: you know, the etymology of words or terms. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's the origin story for that word or for that term,
Speaker 1: or even for that phrase. So that's cool. Also, I
Speaker 1: want to know before we jump into the numbers and
Speaker 1: the stats and we see what's actually happened happening across
Speaker 1: the medical landscape. Yeah, I want to know, like, why
Speaker 1: does a young dude spend his wage paying people to
Speaker 1: create this thing? And I'm pretty sure that you're not
Speaker 1: trying to get.
Speaker 4: Rich doing this, because you could get rich much easier,
Speaker 4: and you could, you could, you could invest your In fact,
Speaker 4: this would make you about the worst business man ever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So what what was the like just from
Speaker 1: that curiosity of the lady in the staff room when
Speaker 1: you were doing that work in the school and seeing
Speaker 1: that to this thing that you have now created, which
Speaker 1: is you know, expanding and growing and getting a footprint
Speaker 1: and recognition and all kinds of attention. What what was
Speaker 1: the motivator for you? Like? Why did you want to
Speaker 1: invest so much of your life and your own money
Speaker 1: to do it?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's not been a
Speaker 3: particularly fruit investment so far. Over the course of the
Speaker 3: first eighteen months of Cleanville, it cost me a fair
Speaker 3: amount of money. It's now bringing in enough money that
Speaker 3: it can pay for itself. Although I still am working
Speaker 3: a different job full time. I no longer have to
Speaker 3: pay my salary to keep it running, which is good.
Speaker 3: But I mean when it first started out, when it
Speaker 3: was just mind the gap it was and it was
Speaker 3: just me doing the calling. It was just something to
Speaker 3: do over the Holimads. It was something that I wanted
Speaker 3: to investigate and see what was happening in I'd always
Speaker 3: grown up assuming that that Australia had this really robust
Speaker 3: universal healthcare system, and the purpose of a universal healthcare
Speaker 3: system and a robust one was to ensure that anyone
Speaker 3: who got sick at any time would be able to
Speaker 3: go and see a doctor, regardless of their economic circumstances.
Speaker 3: And the more I dug into it when I was
Speaker 3: working online the Gap, the more I realized that it
Speaker 3: was firstly a lot more complex than that, and secondly
Speaker 3: becoming increasingly rare that people, regardless of their economic circumstances
Speaker 3: would be able to access that primary care that they needed.
Speaker 3: And so Mind the Gap kind of then more from
Speaker 3: being just an interest thing to almost feeling as though
Speaker 3: a mission that had to be completed myself. I felt
Speaker 3: like I was in a position now where I understood
Speaker 3: quite clearly what was happening in our broader medicare system
Speaker 3: and in the accessibility of primary care, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to ensure that there was a tool that people could
Speaker 3: use to find doctors and see how much it would
Speaker 3: cost to go and visit them. And that carried over
Speaker 3: into clean build as well. And I mean it might sound,
Speaker 3: I guess trite, but it was really a feeling that
Speaker 3: if there is an opportunity here for me to make
Speaker 3: a differences improve people's access here, and I instead decide
Speaker 3: to stand by and do nothing to ensure that people
Speaker 3: have that access, then you know, I'm kind of accepting
Speaker 3: the fact that there's nothing that can be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember, if I remember correctly, that is when
Speaker 1: you first launched in twenty twenty three, or you did
Speaker 1: your first Blue report, and my correct was twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Three, twenty three.
Speaker 1: Good, yep. That you know, reaching out to all of these,
Speaker 1: you know, first time, reaching out to all of these
Speaker 1: medical centers and clinics and providers and trying to get
Speaker 1: information about pricing, you weren't exactly warmly received by everybody.
Speaker 1: Do I recall that correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's I think we did receive a bit
Speaker 3: of a warmer reception in twenty twenty three than I
Speaker 3: was receiving in twenty seventeen. When I first started doing
Speaker 3: it with mine in the gap, Like in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: it was really unheard of thing to call up a
Speaker 3: clinic and ask what their price was, and I had
Speaker 3: all number of clinics.
Speaker 2: Refusing to provide a quote.
Speaker 3: You had, you know, twenty twenty five percent of clinics
Speaker 3: refusing to provide a quote because they just it was
Speaker 3: a foreign thing.
Speaker 2: But we kept doing it, and.
Speaker 3: The blue reports that we've done in twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: and in twenty twenty four now have completely changed the
Speaker 3: national narrative around disclosure of pricing. Now it's an expectation
Speaker 3: that when people call up at GP clinic they will
Speaker 3: be able to get that information, to the point that
Speaker 3: when we're collecting data for GP clinics now we have
Speaker 3: fewer than one percent not providing a quote, and an
Speaker 3: increasing number of GP clinics each year are putting their
Speaker 3: pricing up on their website, so you don't even necessarily.
Speaker 2: Have to call them anymore. You can just go on
Speaker 2: that website.
Speaker 3: Now it's still a small percentage, unfortunately, but it is
Speaker 3: a growing percentage. And so that's been I think a
Speaker 3: really really good byproduct of the advocacy work that we've
Speaker 3: done in this area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well that is great, And I mean, think
Speaker 1: about any other product or service where I'm selling you
Speaker 1: something but I'm not going to tell you how much
Speaker 1: it is what it's a ridiculous notion. Yeah I want
Speaker 1: to buy that lounge, Sure, how much is it? I
Speaker 1: can't tell you. Or I want to go and train
Speaker 1: with a personal trainer. Sure, I'll train you three days
Speaker 1: a week. Okay, how much is a per session? Can't
Speaker 1: tell you, Craig.
Speaker 3: It's the way I think of it as almost even
Speaker 3: more of an imperative than those examples, whilst they're good examples.
Speaker 3: The way I explained it when I first started out
Speaker 3: was that imagine if you're running law on fuel in
Speaker 3: a neighborhood that you don't know, and instead of there
Speaker 3: being an app that shows you all of the petrol
Speaker 3: stations around you and how much they cost, there's no app.
Speaker 3: There's nothing that you can see. None of the petrol
Speaker 3: stations even have that big sign out front that says
Speaker 3: how much it costs. You just have to drive up
Speaker 3: to the pump, fill up your car, and then go
Speaker 3: in and pay whatever they tell you the cost is
Speaker 3: for filling up your tank. That's the situation that you
Speaker 3: were in with GPS, and are still in with some
Speaker 3: specialists across the country, where you need this service. You
Speaker 3: need what they're providing. If you run out of petrol,
Speaker 3: you're not going very far. If you're not able to
Speaker 3: take care of your health, you're not probably going very
Speaker 3: far either. You need the service that they're providing, and
Speaker 3: there is no transparency whatsoever around costs. It would be
Speaker 3: an utterly foreign concept for that to occur with petrol,
Speaker 3: yet it's something that people have accepted for a long time.
Speaker 2: With medicine in.
Speaker 1: Australia, is there a particular area of specialty in the
Speaker 1: medical space that is particularly elusive and or evasive when
Speaker 1: it comes to clarity around pricing. Well, so, we've we've.
Speaker 2: Had a lot of success with GPS and with improving
Speaker 2: the likelihood that.
Speaker 3: The GP clinic will tell people what they're pricing is
Speaker 3: ahead of time. We've also seen that flow through to
Speaker 3: some special so we have listed dermatologists on the website,
Speaker 3: and most dermatology clinics quite forthcoming in the pricing information
Speaker 3: that they had. We've not branched out too much into
Speaker 3: other specialties yet. I know from experience when I was
Speaker 3: doing the calls for mind the Gap back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: we had even greater difficulty in getting pricing information from
Speaker 3: all specialists, whether they be dermatologists, nts, psychiatrists, anything like
Speaker 3: that we were having trouble. So it will be interesting,
Speaker 3: I think, to see as we expand out into other specialties,
Speaker 3: which we intend to do in the early months of
Speaker 3: next year, whether that culture has also changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, without further ado, let's jump
Speaker 1: in and give us kind of the the highlight reel
Speaker 1: or the snapshot of what the new report is going
Speaker 1: to tell us in terms of your key findings.
Speaker 3: Of course, so it's worth remembering when you look at
Speaker 3: the report. But what we're looking at here is the
Speaker 3: bold billing rate as defined by our report. So we
Speaker 3: define it a little bit differently to the government, and
Speaker 3: the way we define it is the percentage of available clinics,
Speaker 3: so clinics that are taking on new patients that will
Speaker 3: both build a regular adult for a standard consultation.
Speaker 2: Now that it sounds.
Speaker 3: Very specific when you lay it out like that grade,
Speaker 3: but that's actually how the vast majority of adults interact
Speaker 3: with their GP is they'll go in for a standard consultation.
Speaker 3: And we only want to measure the available clinics because
Speaker 3: if you're someone new to an area, who are the
Speaker 3: vast majority of people who are using clean to find GPS.
Speaker 3: It's unhelpful to know that there are five GP clinics
Speaker 3: around you that will both bill you if none of
Speaker 3: them are able to take you ont.
Speaker 2: Of the patient.
Speaker 3: So there's not really there's no list of every GP
Speaker 3: clinic in Australia. In fact, it's very difficult to even
Speaker 3: tell how many GP clinics there are in Australia. So
Speaker 3: when klean bill goes out, we're just looking to find
Speaker 3: every single one that we can, so I guess we're
Speaker 3: assembling the comprehensive lists in that regard, and that means
Speaker 3: that we found in twenty twenty three we found just
Speaker 3: over six thousand, three hundred clinics in six eight hundred,
Speaker 3: and this year over six thousand, nine hundred, So we
Speaker 3: are improving as the years to go by, and I
Speaker 3: would estimate that this is probably between ninety five and
Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of the GP clinics across Australia. We've
Speaker 3: called a price Information and what we found is that
Speaker 3: over the course of the last two years, the BOLD
Speaker 3: building rate across Australia has fallen from thirty five point
Speaker 3: seven percent to twenty point seven percent.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: What that means is that the percentage of clinics that
Speaker 3: will both bill a new adult patient has fallen from
Speaker 3: over a third of clinics, it's now around a fifth
Speaker 3: of clinics right now.
Speaker 1: It's gone from literally gone from one in three to
Speaker 1: one in five. I mean that is that and that
Speaker 1: is in two years?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And why? I mean, sorry to interrupt, but no,
Speaker 1: why is that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Why do you what's your theory?
Speaker 3: Well, I've got to be a little bit careful about
Speaker 3: how I talk about this, Craig, because my other job,
Speaker 3: by full time job, is working for the government, so
Speaker 3: I'm not actually allowed to comment on government policy, right,
Speaker 3: But I would say, more broadly, think about the last
Speaker 3: two years, Craig, and the economic circumstances that we've all faced.
Speaker 3: It's been I don't think it's too much to say
Speaker 3: it's been a cost of living crisis. We've all faced
Speaker 3: the crunch of inflation, and small businesses are heavily impacted
Speaker 3: by that, and most GP clinics, even today when there
Speaker 3: are these large practice owners around, most GP clinics are
Speaker 3: still small businesses and so when their costs go up,
Speaker 3: they unfortunately a lot of them, have to make the
Speaker 3: choice between continuing to both bill only certain groups and
Speaker 3: charging out a pocket cost for their regular adult patients,
Speaker 3: or some of them have to look at cutting costs
Speaker 3: elsewhere or potentially shutting down if they're not able to
Speaker 3: continue to bold fill their clientele or make ends meet
Speaker 3: in other ways. So I think that's why we're seeing
Speaker 3: the bolk billing rate ball and fall so rapidly over
Speaker 3: the last two years. Is just we've faced very difficult
Speaker 3: economic circumstances over the last few years, and we're seeing
Speaker 3: these play out with GP clinics, which are mostly small businesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, right, okay, all right, So number one is
Speaker 1: bolt billing rates is on the slide one third down
Speaker 1: to one fifth. Yep, all right.
Speaker 3: Next, well, what's really interesting is, well, Craig, is how
Speaker 3: these bulk billing rates stack up within the states and territories.
Speaker 3: Because the national bolt building rate is overwhelmingly being held
Speaker 3: up by New South Wales at this stage, right Musicwealth
Speaker 3: has a thirty four point five percent vault billing rate.
Speaker 3: Over half the volt billing clinics nationally are located in
Speaker 3: New South Wales. Wow, Yeah, which means that all of
Speaker 3: the other states have far lower bolt billing rates. In fact,
Speaker 3: Victoria and Queensland are the only two other states now
Speaker 3: that have a vault billing rate above ten percent.
Speaker 1: Wow wow, that's amazing. I mean, so so all of
Speaker 1: the states other than Queensland and Victoria are below ten.
Speaker 3: Percent, below ten percent. Yeah, Tasmania is currently at zero percent.
Speaker 1: Wow wow wow. Okay, yeap.
Speaker 3: What's really interesting as well is when you break this
Speaker 3: down by numbers. So Western Australia has six hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty one clinics that we were able to find. Thirty
Speaker 3: seven of those we have listed as bold billing, which
Speaker 3: is a six point two percent bolt billing rate. But
Speaker 3: if you break that down by population, that means that
Speaker 3: there's now one bold billing clinic in Western Australia for
Speaker 3: every forty six thousand, six hundred and thirty nine adults.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. And as you were saying before, like
Speaker 1: not all of these bulk billing clinics are open to
Speaker 1: new patients, is that right?
Speaker 3: So the way that we measure them when we're talking
Speaker 3: about these percentages, all of these are open to new patients,
Speaker 3: right right, right. In actuality, the bulk billing rate may
Speaker 3: in fact be a little bit higher than this places
Speaker 3: than what we're reporting. But those clinics are not taking
Speaker 3: on new patients. It's not super helpful if you're a
Speaker 3: new patient looking for a clinic around there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, of course, of course. And so I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the bottom line for the bottom line is just
Speaker 1: that the bottom line is higher for patients and for
Speaker 1: the general public.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And we see this playing out in the
Speaker 3: average out of pocket costs. So some time ago, the
Speaker 3: out of pocket cost, the average amount that you're paying
Speaker 3: started started increasing to the point that it now exceeds
Speaker 3: the Medicare rebate in and of itself. So the Medicare
Speaker 3: rebate is forty two dollars and eighty five cents for
Speaker 3: standard consultation, and the average out of pocket cost that
Speaker 3: you're paying is forty three dollars and thirty eight cents.
Speaker 3: So you're paying double the Medicare rebate for a standard
Speaker 3: consultation and you're getting less than half of that out
Speaker 3: from Medicare when you're when you're going to see the GP.
Speaker 1: And do you think, James, I mean, if you have
Speaker 1: any data on this, but you're I mean, you're in
Speaker 1: and around it. Do you feel like you know, people
Speaker 1: are not going to the doctor who perhaps should be
Speaker 1: going to the doctor purely just because they can't afford it,
Speaker 1: and they've got to choose between buying food for the
Speaker 1: kids or going to see about that pain they've got
Speaker 1: in their bloody left ear.
Speaker 3: This is a really, really good question, Craig. And thankfully,
Speaker 3: whilst Klingber isn't able to collect statistics on this, the
Speaker 3: Australian Bureau of Statistics does publish statistics on this. So
Speaker 3: each year in November they publish the percentage of Australians
Speaker 3: over the age of fifteen who haven't gone to see
Speaker 3: a GP because of concerns surrounding costs in the previous year.
Speaker 3: So literally just what you've just asked, they published. And
Speaker 3: what's interesting is that in twenty twenty one, twenty two,
Speaker 3: which is the first, which is the which we're released
Speaker 3: in November of twenty twenty two, and so we're incorporated
Speaker 3: into our twenty twenty three Blue Reports, the percentage of
Speaker 3: Australians over the age of fifteen who hadn't gone to
Speaker 3: see a GP because of concerns and cost was three
Speaker 3: point five percent. Now that's about six hundred thousand Australians
Speaker 3: that percentage now two years later is eight point eight percent,
Speaker 3: which is over one point five million Australians. So you've
Speaker 3: seen just a truly enormous increase in just the last
Speaker 3: two years. And the number of Australians who aren't going
Speaker 3: to see the doctor because of costs.
Speaker 1: Hang on, let me just so, one point five million
Speaker 1: people who need to go the doctor have not gone
Speaker 1: to the doctor purely, not because they don't want to go,
Speaker 1: or not because they don't need to go, but because
Speaker 1: they can't afford it. That's that's scary, isn't it? It is?
Speaker 3: And it has brought implications for the healthcare system that
Speaker 3: we're living in because for how much longer can you
Speaker 3: consider that you have a universal healthcare system If you
Speaker 3: have over one one and a half million Australians not
Speaker 3: going to see the doctor because of costs. If the
Speaker 3: entire purpose of a universal healthcare system is to ensure
Speaker 3: that people can see a doctor regardless of their economic circumstances,
Speaker 3: that would seem to be a fairly indicted, a fairly
Speaker 3: clear indictment on that system when that many Australians can't
Speaker 3: go to see a doctor because of costs.
Speaker 1: So I mean with this report, which is enlightening and
Speaker 1: kind of shocking to be honest, What are the underlying aims?
Speaker 1: You know, what are the drivers? What do you want
Speaker 1: to happen? I'm sure there's not a thing, there's many things,
Speaker 1: but what would you like to see happening? Mate?
Speaker 3: Well, there are really two goals that we have in
Speaker 3: releasing a report like this. The first is the same
Speaker 3: goal that I've had for every piece of media that
Speaker 3: I've released, every report I've released for the media since
Speaker 3: the Mind the Gap days, and that is to provide
Speaker 3: to peace people an idea of the coverage that clean
Speaker 3: bill has and the fact that clean bill exists out
Speaker 3: there as a free website that they can use to
Speaker 3: go and find GPS around them, because whilst these statistics
Speaker 3: may look dire, it is still possible in most areas
Speaker 3: to find either a bowl filling or a low out
Speaker 3: of pocket cost GP. And having a service like clean bill,
Speaker 3: a free service like clean built that shows people where
Speaker 3: these GP clinics are, lets them filter them by their
Speaker 3: pricing and then see exactly how much it'll cost to
Speaker 3: go on them. They have to pick up a phone
Speaker 3: is critically important to ensuring that people are able to
Speaker 3: find the doctors who they can afford and who are
Speaker 3: available to see them. So that's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that we release the report is just to create awareness
Speaker 3: of the service that clean Bill provides. But the second
Speaker 3: reason that has become a lot clearer since releasing these
Speaker 3: reports under the banner of clean Built, just because of
Speaker 3: how comprehensive the statistics have become, is that Kleanbal's the
Speaker 3: only one doing this. We're the only ones even trying
Speaker 3: to find every single GP clinics across the country, and
Speaker 3: we're certainly the only ones reporting on availability rates, on
Speaker 3: foulfilling rate on a clinic by clinic basis, which is
Speaker 3: how people interact with their GP clinics. The way that
Speaker 3: we publish this data reflects how people interact with GPS
Speaker 3: around them, and so when we're publishing these reports, what
Speaker 3: we're hoping to do is provide decision makers both at
Speaker 3: the federal and state level with the best information possible
Speaker 3: to inform the policy decisions that they're making. So we're
Speaker 3: not partisan about this, We're not advocating for one side
Speaker 3: or the other. What we're saying is this is the
Speaker 3: state of healthcare in Australia. We've arrived at this state
Speaker 3: and arrived at this description of this state by going
Speaker 3: through the process that everyday Australians have to go through
Speaker 3: every single time they're looking for a new GP, and
Speaker 3: this is what it looks like for them. And so
Speaker 3: decision makers can then take this information that we provided
Speaker 3: and it can assist them what we hope it can
Speaker 3: assist them in designing policies that will ensure that Australians
Speaker 3: are more able to find those faulk building all well
Speaker 3: out of cost options around them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's for a noble intention. I'm just having a
Speaker 1: look everyone at the Clean Build site. It's just clean
Speaker 1: build dot com dot au. Super super clean and sharp,
Speaker 1: no pun intended, but very nice sight mate, very just
Speaker 1: very clean and clear and almost dare I say clinical,
Speaker 1: but not in a boring way. Everyone. So if you
Speaker 1: want to have a look at what James is talking about,
Speaker 1: and you want to do a little bit of a
Speaker 1: search yourself and whether not you're a potential patient or
Speaker 1: even if you are a provider like a doctor or
Speaker 1: a dermatologist or dentist blah blah blah, think am I
Speaker 1: right in saying that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Craig and Also, all of the reports that we
Speaker 3: release are on the website food, So if you want
Speaker 3: to see, you know, what's happening with dermatologists on a
Speaker 3: national level, we release the report into them in October
Speaker 3: of last year, and you can go on the website
Speaker 3: and see that report in full too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing, amazing. What else do you want
Speaker 1: to share with a smike before you go anything we
Speaker 1: need to know or consider or you want us to
Speaker 1: have a look into.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, look, I mean I think you've been incredibly
Speaker 3: comprehensive creage in everything that you've covered off on here today.
Speaker 3: I would say as well that the website is completely
Speaker 3: free to use when you're when you're going out and
Speaker 3: doing those searches, so there's there's no fee attached as
Speaker 3: a membership or anything like that. So yeah, it's really
Speaker 3: just to reiterate that that's the services out there and
Speaker 3: one that people can use completely free of charts.
Speaker 1: But James is starting a cult, but that's a separate thing.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Night Craig, let's not get into that.
Speaker 1: While yeah, just google clean build cult. You're so he's
Speaker 1: not I'm being silly. I mean, do you know what's
Speaker 1: funny for me? Sitting here. Okay, interview over officially, But
Speaker 1: what's funny sitting here for me, mate, is I know
Speaker 1: you probably hate this, but you're so much like your
Speaker 1: dad and just the way that you talk and the
Speaker 1: way that you phrase things, and yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you like that or hate that, but he's a
Speaker 1: pretty bloody good communicator. So it's not the worst trait,
Speaker 1: you know. Just before we go one, thank you so much, mate,
Speaker 1: Just dear people, So, is that the only place you
Speaker 1: want to kind of send people clean build dot com
Speaker 1: dot au. Do you want to steer them towards any
Speaker 1: social media or anything? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean actually that's thank you for bringing that up, Craig.
Speaker 3: I'm only just getting used to that now because we've
Speaker 3: only just started up some social media recently. So if
Speaker 3: you search at clean bill oz, we're on everything except
Speaker 3: for Twitter x or whatever it's called now. We're on TikTok,
Speaker 3: We're on YouTube, on Instagram and basically what I've been
Speaker 3: doing with those with the videos that we've been putting
Speaker 3: up there is just really short, one minute long videos
Speaker 3: that explain some element of the healthcare system, because at
Speaker 3: the moment, Australia has one of the most complex healthcare
Speaker 3: systems on Earth, and a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 3: you and I have spoken about here today, Craig, a
Speaker 3: lot of the terms that we're using, things like folk filling,
Speaker 3: things like out of pocket cost, may be quite new
Speaker 3: to a lot of people, so that we have some
Speaker 3: socials and it's really just videos explaining out what those
Speaker 3: terms mean, why we're in the state that we're in
Speaker 3: when it comes to bolth filling, what the government statistics
Speaker 3: mean and why they're different to clean Bill statistics, and
Speaker 3: also just explainers of the reports that we release as well.
Speaker 3: So we'll be doing an in depth explainer of the
Speaker 3: Blue Report, going into a little bit more detail than
Speaker 3: you and I have today, Craig, and things like that.
Speaker 3: So if people are interested in learning a little bit
Speaker 3: more about clean Bill's background and also seeing a little
Speaker 3: bit more about the healthcare system and the reports we release,
Speaker 3: it's at clean bill oz on just about every social
Speaker 3: media you can find.
Speaker 1: And when you say os is a US.
Speaker 3: Or a US, it occurred to me, as I said
Speaker 3: at Craig, that was slightly as well. Yeah, Cleanville a US.
Speaker 1: James Gillespie from Clean Bill, you're a gun mate, we'll
Speaker 1: chat next year, I'm sure, and we'll say goodbye off
Speaker 1: in a moment, but for now, thanks for being on
Speaker 1: the You project mate, Thanks very much, Craig