To the Editor: I write in protest about the short-sighted decision of the Australian Government to remove outer metropolitan areas from eligibility for Medicare rebates for telehealth from 1 January 2013. Since then, there has been a 29% drop in the number of video consultations, with 9476 recorded from 1 January to 28 February 2013, compared with 13 311 from 1 November to 31 December 2012.1
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I am presently employed by the University of Adelaide and am managing a project on telehealth that is funded by the Department of Health and Ageing. Until July 2012, I was the unpaid Medical Director of Design Networks Pty Ltd, a small South Australian company that supplies telehealth services. I have been reimbursed by Design Networks and by Telstra for expenses incurred in the course of attending telehealth conferences in Australia.