Mrs GALLUS —My question is addressed to the Minister for Health and Family Services. Is the minister aware of a practice sometimes known as `doctor shopping' where a patient goes from doctor to doctor seeking prescriptions for particular drugs? What is the estimated cost to the community of doctor shopping? What measures can the government consider to address this problem?

Dr WOOLDRIDGE —I thank the honourable member for her question. I am aware of the issue she raises. The definition of `doctor shopping' is someone who sees more than 30 prescribing doctors in a 12-month period. It is something we flagged in our policy before the election that we would be tough on, and the basic strategy that has been pursued up to date is to audit people who get more than 300 prescriptions a year or who see more than 30 doctors a year. That is 1,599 people in the first part of the audit. The results of the first phase of that audit have now been collated.

What they show is the government can make an average saving of $5,000 every time it intervenes at an average cost to the government of $300, which in this first phase looks like a saving of $8 million. On that basis, an exact estimate of how much it is costing is very difficult, but if you include the additional medical, hospital and pharmaceutical costs it is somewhere between one per cent and 10 per cent of these programs, which is between $80 million and $800 million.

There is a particular concern as well with pharmaceuticals that some people visiting Australia may be hoarding pharmaceuticals—stockpiling them, having obtained them first under the safety net proposal. The Health Insurance Commission is investigating a number of such cases. If it believes there is a prima facie case of stockpiling, then it will be referred to the Federal Police.

On three occasions in the past 12 months, the Health Insurance Commission has prosecuted people under the Crimes Act and the National Health Act. We will continue to aggressively pursue this as well as looking at issues of medical overservicing. I think we have to look at the demand side as well, which is the patient side. Methods to tackle doctor shopping have to take into account privacy issues and issues of the doctor-patient relationship, but it is vitally important if we are to make Medicare and the pharmaceutical benefits system sustainable in the long term.