Albury Wodonga Cancer Care offering bulk-billing oncology services

Husband-and-wife team Brett Hamilton and Kay Xu launched Albury Wodonga Cancer Care in September.

Their service is in addition to those at the Border Cancer Hospital, where Ramsay Health, Border Medical Oncology and GenesisCare work under a public-private partnership.

Dr Hamilton, who has worked in cancer care locally for three years, saw a gap in service provision.

"We identified that there was a need for the community to have an accessible, bulk-billed service for patients who are on long-term cancer care, who can very often undergo a significant financial burden," he said.

"This wasn't available before."

It is a unique combination of factors that allows Dr Hamilton and Dr Xu to offer the service in Albury-Wodonga and Wangaratta.

"To run a bulk-billing service, you really need volume, because the Medicare rebates are not fantastic - hence the need for most places to charge a gap," Dr Hamilton said.

"Because we are essentially two people under the one income, that allows us to achieve better volume.

"That's one unique factor, and the second factor is that we have very low overheads."

Dr Xu explained their patients had access to facilities at the Albury-Wodonga Regional Cancer Centre.

"Patients get treatment over at the day oncology unit with Ramsay; if they need to be admitted, they're admitted under our beds cards," she said.

"We attend all the multidisciplinary meetings and have great working relationships.

"If patients ever need trials, we would refer to the trials unit that is within the cancer centre, the Border Medical Oncology Research Unit.

"It's unique for a regional centre to have two private services.

"But we saw that there was an opportunity ... to basically give patients choice.

"If they couldn't afford care, some of these patients were travelling to Melbourne."

The pair, who met as a medical students, are committed to Albury-Wodonga and Dr Hamilton hopes to see the cancer centre's scope expand to include more cancer care for children.

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"We've had a lot of encouragement and support from the community," he said.

"We're all for an expansion of the service - we've got a big enough population.

"Australian healthcare systems are at their best when there is a private system and a public system working together."

Clarification:

The Border Mail wishes to clarify details in the article, "Bulk-billed oncology 'fills gap' on Border", published on Monday, February 21.

The article described new bulk-billed oncology services provided by Albury Wodonga Cancer Care.

The existing provider, Border Medical Oncology at the Albury Wodonga Regional Cancer Centre, has always bulk-billed those in financial need, and we did not seek to imply it did not.

Both practices are private-public with funding arrangements in place with Albury Wodonga Health for those with pensions and health care cards.

The article referenced hopes the cancer centre's scope would "expand to include cancer care for children".

Paediatric cancer services were expanded as part of the AWRCC build, but are located in the paediatric ward at AWH.