Under the Chronic Disease Management program, general practitioners are able to refer patients with chronic diseases to allied health practitioners for consultations which attract Medicare benefits. The Medicare item number podiatrists use for these consultations is 10962.

The Department of Human Services has posted its provider percentile chart for the use of item number 10962 by podiatrists from the 1st January to the 31st December 2013. According to the chart, on average, podiatrists claimed Medicare benefits for 507 of these chronic disease consultations in 2013. Assuming a podiatrist works full-time, (5 days per week), that would be approximately 2 of these consultations per day.

Podiatrists in the 90th percentile claimed 1560, and podiatrists in the 95th percentile claimed 2044 of these consultations in 2013. That’s a lot of chronic disease consultations, most likely the vast majority of these being related to diabetes.

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