The Australian Medical Association has highlighted the Medicare provider enquiry line as a bigger risk for fraudulently obtaining Medicare numbers than online systems such as HPOS as it warns against lumbering general practices with extra responsibility for security.

In a submission to the independent review of health provider access to Medicare card numbers, which was called following the revelation by The Guardian that Medicare numbers were for sale on the dark web, the AMA said the relatively small amount of Medicare numbers said to have been sold – it is apparently 75 in total – needed to be put into context against the 45,000 interactions per day by healthcare providers using HPOS.