Our Billing Policy Explained
Nearly all GP practices in Australia are private businesses that decide on business models that either provide bulk billing to everyone, charge everyone private fees or to have a mixture of both based on certain criteria. To be able to bulk bill everyone requires a high volume of patient throughput for a business to be viable. We do not believe this is a model under which we could provide the quality of care that we want to. On the other hand private billing everyone regardless of personal circumstances makes healthcare inaccessible to a number of people in our community, which we also find unacceptable.
Mixed billing allows us to be viable as a business, to be accessible to the whole community and to provide sufficient time to all of our patients to provide quality healthcare. As a result we undertake to bulk bill the following patients:
- All children under 16 years of age.
- All patients 65 years old and over who have a current government Health Care Card (in addition to their Medicare Card)
- All DVA Gold Card holders
- All DVA White Card holders for consultations that relate to their accepted conditions.
All patients outside this criteria should expect to pay a private fee, some of which will usually be rebated from Medicare. We do have situations where patients that do not meet our bulk billing criteria ask to be bulk billed. Billing of each patient is ultimately the decision of the treating doctor, who may decide to bulk bill or discount a fee for any number of reasons, but if you do not meet our bulk billing criteria, this should not be expected. Any patients that are basing their decision to consult one of our doctors on whether they will be bulk billed or not should do the following:
- Familiarise yourself with what bulk billing is (click here for an explanation) so you are aware of what you are asking from the doctor, and
- Ask about this prior to your consultation, not after the service has already been provided.