Patients with private health cover may soon be able to claim yoga, Western herbal medicine and other natural therapies as benefits if recommendations from a recent review are actioned.
A report on the clinical evidence of 16 natural therapies not currently eligible for private health rebates has been published.
While the therapies had, for a window of time previously, been claimable under some private health insurance policies, their eligibility was revoked after a 2013 review was unable to provide sufficient evidence of their clinical effectiveness.
This latest report has recommended a list of seven natural therapies as having sufficient evidence to be re-introduced as private health insurance benefits.
The review headed up by Professor Michael Kidd, considered the additional evidence available since a previous review in 2015.
Prof Kidd recommended re-inclusion of a therapy where there was found to be moderate certainty of clinical effectiveness for at least one health outcome in one health condition.
For example, the review found with moderate certainty that the Alexander technique probably improves physical function for people with chronic musculoskeletal conditions involving low back pain or neck pain.
The therapy involves verbal instruction, gentle hand contact, and feedback that guides participants in making subtle changes to their movement or actions to promote or restore beneficial posture, coordination, balance, movement, breathing patterns and function by raising awareness of previously unnoticed habitual patterns.
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Naturopathy, pilates, shiatsu, tai chi, western herbal medicine and yoga were also among those therapies recommended for re-inclusion.
However, sufficient evidence was not found for the other nine therapies considered including aromatherapy, bowen therapy, buteyko, feldenkrais, homeopathy, iridology, kinesiology, reflexology and rolfing.
The report looked at different aspects of naturopathy, many of which it found had low certainty of clinical effectiveness, but it found a number of specific naturopathic treatments to have evidence that provided moderate certainty of improving some health outcomes.
It found probiotics may provide some limited benefits to those with irritable bowel syndrome and antioxidants – specifically CoQ10 and alpha-lipoic acid – could probably have benefits for some people with chronic fatigue syndrome and people with obesity at risk of type 2 diabetes.
The report also found zinc probably reduces recurrent infections in some children with otitis media.
However, AMA(WA) President Dr Michael Page told Medical Forum he did not think naturopathy should attract rebates from “mainstream insurance providers”.
“Unless it was an absolutely non-mainstream insurance provider, then, each to their own. If someone wants to pay for that type of insurance, they can, but as a private health insurance member, I would not want to see my rebates paying for totally non-evidence-based therapies, including naturopathy,” he said.
“I suspect the majority of GPs would feel similarly that they would not like to see non-evidence-based treatments getting insurer rebates, whether that’s public insurer or private insurer. That money should be reserved for mainstream treatments that are securely evidence based.”
Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler’s office was contacted for comment on whether the Federal Government had plans to implement the recommendations but did not provide comment on the matter.
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