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From 1 November 2021, patients with chronic bowel inflammation will be able to claim a Medicare rebate for non-invasive laboratory tests, reducing the need for diagnostic endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures.
The Morrisonac Government is listing faecal calprotectin testing to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) on the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS).
Its use means that fewer patients will require diagnostic endoscopy and colonoscopy, with faecal calprotectin shown to be an effective, safer and significantly cheaper alternative.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – collectively known as IBD – are chronic diseases that require complex and long-term care.
Two new items will be listed on the MBS – one to test faecal calprotectin levels for diagnostic purposes as requested by a medical practitioner and another for follow-up testing for diagnostic confirmation when requested by a specialist gastroenterologist.
Patients presenting to a medical practitioner must have been experiencing symptoms suggestive of inflammatory or functional bowel disease for more than six weeks, be under 50 years of age, and have had infectious causes excluded to be eligible for the MBS rebated test, which will assist in distinguishing inflammatory from functional bowel disease.
A further test can be requested by a specialist gastroenterologist when an initial test is inconclusive.
The new items have been recommended by the expert Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) and the Australian Government has agreed with the recommendations.
Consultation has been undertaken with key stakeholders, clinical experts and providers, and consumer health representatives as part of the MSAC process.

The Morrison Government is helping improve access to an important treatment for Australians battling a form of breast cancer.
From 1 November 2021, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) listing of Verzenio® (abemaciclib) will also be expanded for use in combination with fulvestrant.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia, with approximately 55 Australians diagnosed every day. 1 in 7 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
The treatment will be accessible for non-premenopausal breast cancer patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 negative (HER2-) inoperable locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.
Verzenio® works by inhibiting two proteins that drive the growth of tumour cells and when used in combination with fulvestrant can slow the progression of breast cancers in some patients.
Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, said the expanded PBS listing will benefit around 1,600 Australians and their families each year.
“Without this PBS subsidy Australian patients would pay around $80,000 per course of treatment, instead they’ll only pay $41.30 per script or $6.60 with a concession card for these medicines,” Minister Hunt said.
“This listing will help improve the lives of many Australians, ensuring they can access the treatment they need, while reducing their out of pocket costs.”
In April 2021, the Government expanded the listing of Kisqali® (ribociclib) for use in combination with fulvestrant on the PBS for this patient group, this new further treatment option gives hope to more Australians battling breast cancer by providing access to a choice of treatments.
Since 2013, the Coalition Government had approved more than 2,700 new or amended listings on the PBS. This represents an average of around 30 listings or amendments per month – or one each day – at an overall investment by the Government of $13.8 billion.
The Morrison Government’s commitment to ensuring Australians can access affordable medicines, when they need them, remains rock solid.
These PBS listings have been recommended by the independent Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee.

The Morrison Government is giving Australians new support on their IVF journey, providing Medicare rebates for testing services that can help prevent them passing serious genetic disorders onto their child.
Until now, people who know they are carriers of serious genetic disorders could only access these testing services if they were able to pay privately.
From 1 November 2021, people will be able to claim a Medicare rebate for five new Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items for new Pre-implantation Genetic Testing (PGT) services provided within the existing IVF process.
Types of genetic disorders able to be tested include, but are not limited to, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, fragile X, neurofibromatosis and Huntington disease.
PGT is a sophisticated scientific technique which can be used to test embryos for either a specific known single gene condition or chromosome variation. This allows chromosomally healthy embryos or those unaffected by a specific genetic disorder to be selected for implantation during an IVF cycle, maximising the chance of a healthy baby.
The Government is providing $95.9 million so that PGT services can be reimbursed through Medicare. This implements recommendations from the independent, expert Medical Services Advisory Committee.
This change will give real, practical support to individuals and couples on their fertility journey. It will help ease the financial strain on people using IVF to conceive.
Under the direction of a medical specialist, Medicare funding will support individuals or couples who carry a risk of passing on a serious genetic or chromosomal disorder to their child for which there is no cure and which causes a severe limitation on the quality of life.
Other IVF services already funded under Medicare will not change under the new arrangements.
More information is available at MBS Online.

The next phase of the Australian Government’s vaccine communication campaign launches today, with the message ‘we’re almost there Australia’, reminding people that with increasing vaccinations we are able to return to a more normal, free life.
Whilst we have reached Phase B of the National Plan with seventy per cent of the eligible general population now fully vaccinated and more than 86.1 per cent have had at least one dose, we need to ensure people receive their second dose and we reach the 80 per cent fully vaccinated mark.
The advertisements create a sense of encouragement and a feeling of enjoying more freedoms as Australia opens up, as Australians start to return to travelling overseas, birthday parties, weddings, and a family Christmas.  It provides a positive, hopeful tone, with a touch of humour, to motivate those who are more hesitant, to get vaccinated to avoid missing out on greater freedoms.
The “Spread Freedom” campaign will air from tonight and materials will be shared across all media channels.
To further encourage First Australians to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the Government is also launching a new project entitled “For all of us’.
The project features a number of high profile Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who have come together to encourage their mob to get vaccinated.
Model Samantha Harris, musician Baker Boy, chef Nornie Bero, street artist Tori-Jay Mordey and renowned didgeridoo player and vocalist William Barton all encourage further vaccination uptake and seek to combat vaccine hesitancy.
The project conveys the simple message ‘For our past, for our future, for all of us. Get vaccinated for COVID-19’.
Committees representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, people with a disability and the multicultural communities are being consulted regularly to ensure the vaccination messaging is clear, appropriate and disseminated through the best communication channels to reach all Australians.
The communications campaign also supports on-the-ground engagement with the public, including information kiosks at shopping centres and events, and community in-reach activities with CALD and Indigenous communities.
The Australian Government’s comprehensive COVID-19 vaccination communications campaign is being supported with an investment of more than $90 million.
The Spread Freedom and “For all of us” materials will be available on Health.gov.au from 24 October 2021.

Australian Greens Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has responded to the Education Minister’s latest attempt to whitewash Australian history and pressure the independent curriculum authority to sanitise what’s taught in our schools.
Senator Faruqi said:
“Alan Tudge’s ever-escalating culture war is offensive, pathetic and ahistorical. It should be challenged by everyone who cares about the integrity of our education system.
“Students should be learning critical thinking, not a sanitised version of history. Tudge clearly sees it as his mission as Education Minister to fight what he considers a ‘woke’ agenda in education. This is an alarming approach to say the least.
“The Education Minister’s obsession with the national curriculum reflects several of his Liberal predecessors. But if Christopher Pyne was famously ‘hands-on’, Alan Tudge is ‘gloves off’.
“Right-wing politicians the world over are currently waging these wars. The confected outrage over ‘critical race theory’ in the United States is a case in point. It can escalate and infringe on the civil liberties of teachers and school communities.
“I worry about the effect this has on the independence of ACARA. It’s their job to dispassionately draft the curriculum in consultation with experts. Tudge’s ideological campaign of parliament speeches, TV interviews and newspaper op-eds is unprecedented and puts pressure on them.
“Of course, the great outrage is that while the Education Minister has been fighting this history war, universities have continued to lose thousands of jobs. Schools are grappling with immense challenges in the pandemic. Education is in crisis and the Minister is missing in action.”

Seventeen multidisciplinary research teams will each receive $5 million in funding from the Australian Government to find solutions to major questions in human health that cannot be answered by individual investigators.
The Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, today announced the award of $85 million for 17 projects through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Synergy Grant scheme.
“Collaboration is at the heart of science today,” said Minister Hunt. “Many of our greatest health challenges will only be solved by collaboration between people with different skills and different perspectives.
“These grants bring together teams of Australia’s best health and medical researchers from across disciplines to address health issues as diverse as the link between the gut microbiome and lung inflammation and creating new drugs to fight the emerging viruses and antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
“One project at WEHI will support an exceptional team of experts in computational protein design, structural biology, immunology and brain surgery who will together help achieve better outcomes for those Australians facing the devastating diagnosis of brain cancer.”
The research team at WEHI, led by Associate Professor Misty Jenkins, aims to have one or more novel CAR T-cell therapies to take into clinical trials in Australia to treat glioblastoma, which is the most common primary brain tumour and has a low survival rate.
The team aims to develop cell-based immunotherapies that will potently and specifically eliminate tumours with minimal damage to healthy tissue and will support long-term remissions.
Each Synergy Grant team receives $5 million over 5 years, with funding commencing in 2022.
The Synergy Grant scheme was introduced in 2019 and is designed to support highly collaborative teams of diverse researchers to work together to address major problems in any area of human health and medical research, from discovery to translation. Notably, over 50 per cent of the Synergy Grants awarded in this round are led by women.
NHMRC CEO Professor Anne Kelso said the success of female lead investigators in the latest Synergy Grant outcomes was encouraging for all as well as for many other women starting out on their research careers.
“The projects funded today are exciting examples of what is possible when different disciplines and perspectives are brought together to solve a problem. While the Synergy Grant outcomes for female lead investigators are significant, NHMRC continues to work on ways to ensure women are equally represented at all careers levels and across all our grant schemes,” Professor Kelso said.
Today’s announcement includes funding for research at:

• The University of Queensland where Professor Kate Schroder will lead a multidisciplinary team to create new drugs to fight the emerging viruses and antibiotic-resistant superbugs that are major challenges for human health in the 21st century
• The University of Melbourne where Professor Ingrid Scheffer will lead a team bringing computational expertise to integrate multiple biological measurements from patients with severe forms of epilepsy, revealing underlying disease dynamics and targeting new treatment approaches
• The University of Western Australia and Telethon Kids Institute where Professor Jonathan Carapetis will bring together a diverse team of experts to tackle the social determinants that underlie rheumatic heart disease – a serious disease caused by preventable Strep A infections and disproportionately affecting Indigenous Australians – by investigating how environmental health and housing interventions can stop Strep A spread
• The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) where Professor Alex Brown will lead a national consortium to build Indigenous leadership in genomics through empowering communities to understand genomic variation, identify multi-omic signatures of disease and translate these findings to health care, ensuring Indigenous people can lead genomic research on their terms
• University of Technology Sydney (UTS) where Professor Philip Hansbro will lead a team that will examine the link between gut disease and emphysema and how the altered microbiome can be modified with dietary interventions, with the most effective to be tested in clinical trials.

Community groups and organisations with innovative ways to encourage more people to sign up as an organ donor were launched today on Saffron Day, an event that honours seven-year-old organ donor Deyaan Udani.
Saffron Day, organised by Deyaan’s family and friends, received funding through the 2021 Community Awareness Grants program. Deyaan suffered a brain haemorrhage while on holiday with his family in India in 2016, his organs went on to save four others.
The national day, held on 22 October each year, aims to encourage multicultural communities to talk about donation with their family and register to be an organ and tissue donor.
“To know that Deyaan and his sister had learnt about organ donation at their school in Sydney and discussed it with their parents, before he tragically passed away, highlights the importance of having a family discussion,” Dr Gillespie said.
“Deyaan’s family knew he wanted to be an organ donor and his family were able to fulfill his wishes and save the lives of others. It would have been a very difficult decision for the family to make if they hadn’t already spoken about it.
“Saffron Day, like all of our community grant recipients, offer a unique opportunity to increase reach and engagement about organ and tissue donation with key target audience groups – both a national and more local level.”
Applications are now open for up to $750,000 for community-based initiatives in 2022 including up to three-years of funding for national events to encourage more Australians to say “yes” to organ donation.
Dr Gillespie said the 2022 criteria favoured organisations that can develop and implement either broad-reaching national events, media, public relations or digital activities, research/behavioural change projects or the development of education resources.
“It’s important we continue to build a broad and diverse network of organisations and community groups that can provide new and creative ways of raising awareness about organ and tissue donation across Australia,” Dr Gillespie said.
“We’re looking to target organisations that can engage key audience groups who have low representation on the Australian Organ Donor Register, including young people, First Nations Peoples and multicultural groups.”
Saffron Day is just one of many examples of grant recipients since the program’s inception in 2009.
Other recipients from 2021 include the development of First Nations Peoples videos, a Valentine’s Day campaign targeting young men, a national Gift of Life walk, the production of new education resources for Year 9 and 10 students and radio broadcasting into First Nations communities.
Minister Gillespie said it only takes one minute to register as an organ and tissue donor at donatelife.gov.au or through myGov or the Medicare Express Plus app when downloading your COVID-19 vaccination certificate.
Applications for 2022 funding open today, Friday 22 October 2021 and close at 10:00am AEDT, Wednesday, 17 November 2021. Multi-year funding of up to three years is available for national events applications. Successful applicants will be announced in February 2022.
For more information about the 2022 Community Awareness Grants, including the assessment criteria and the application process, visit donatelife.gov.au/grants.

The Australian Government is calling on the nation’s best and brightest mental health researchers, clinicians, implementation experts, and consumer and carer representatives to help inform the future of research in this vital area.
Expressions of interest are invited for the next Expert Advisory Panel (EAP) for the Medical Research Future Fund’s Million Minds Mental Health Research Mission.
The Government is seeking a diverse panel with a range of skills and backgrounds to meet the objectives of the Million Minds Mission.
The Mission’s aim is to identify – through research – new approaches to prevent, detect, diagnose, treat, and recover from mental ill health.
Mental health issues take a huge toll, individually and collectively, across the country. Almost half of all Australian adults will face mental ill health at some point, and the estimated cost to Australia’s economy is up to $220 billion each year.
The Million Minds Mission is a $125 million 10-year initiative which has already provided almost $65 million for a diverse range of mental health research projects, including eating disorders, suicide prevention and the impact of COVID-19.
The EAP will advise how the remaining $60 million will be focused on research that can address gaps in knowledge to support mental health care to provide better outcomes for individuals and communities, taking into account the outcomes already delivered.
The panel will refresh the Mission’s existing Roadmap and develop an Implementation Plan to clearly identify priorities for research investment.
The Government is seeking Australian applicants from a variety of backgrounds including mental health researchers, mental health clinicians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with mental health expertise, rural and remote mental health researchers and clinicians, consumer representatives with lived experience of mental ill-health and those involved in translating mental health research into practice or policy.
Expressions of interest open on 22 October and close on 26 November. The EAP will be appointed from 2022. Instructions on how to apply are available at https://health.gov.au/resources/publications/expression-of-interest-mrff-million-minds-mental-health-research-mission-expert-advisory-panel

The Morrison Government is investing $40.5 million for a new Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) item to improve the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension (high blood pressure).
From 1 November, Australians will be able to claim rebates for ambulatory blood pressure measurement, which monitors a patient’s blood pressure continuously over 24 hours through a wearable device to diagnose if they are hypertensive or not.
Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is the best available test to confirm the diagnosis of hypertension and more effective than in-clinic blood pressure monitoring. It will save lives and improve lives.
In Australia, about 1 in 3 people aged 18 and over have high blood pressure. Men are more likely to have uncontrolled high blood pressure. 1 in 4 men have uncontrolled high blood pressure, compared with 1 in 5 women.
It is a risk factor for chronic conditions, including stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure and chronic kidney disease.
Minister for Health and Aged Care, Greg Hunt, said, the Morrison Government was committed to ensuring Australians can access the latest in health care diagnosis and treatment.
“This is a significant development in hypertension awareness and care in Australia and we anticipate that this listing will benefit more than 400,000 Australians in the first 12 months,” Minister Hunt said.
“The Morrison Government’s commitment to Medicare is rock solid and we will continue to ensure that Australians have access to access to new medicines and treatments.
“Australia has a world-class health system and our government will continue to ensure it remains that way.”
The new MBS item includes consultation, fitting of the device, analysis of the data, generation of a report and development of a treatment plan.
The Government agreed to add Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring to the MBS following recommendations from the independent Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC). We’d also like to acknowledge the work of the High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia, including Professor Geoffrey Head, Dr Anastasia Mihailidou, Professor Michael Stowasser and Professor Markus Schlaich.
A number of new MBS items are expected to be available from November 1 2021.