A little over 6 months after the government’s November 2025 changes to GP bulk billing, Dr Aniello Iannuzzi, Dr Karen Price and Dr Mukesh Haikerwal discuss what has happened in general practice.
They note that the ability of general practitioners to efficiently and sustainably provide patient services is being impaired, as government red tape, and particularly the requirement to obtain a patient signature for every episode of care, hampers practice productivity.
Meanwhile, government has lost the trust of both the medical profession and the public, especially over broken promises about the indexation of bulk billing incentives, which have been adjusted well under general inflation.
Fully bulk billed practices face the threat of losing 12% of practice income if even one patient is privately billed, along with the added administrative and financial burden of obtaining and keeping patient signatures for every episode of care. This is particularly problematic in rural and regional practices and nursing home care.
Instead of governments placing more and more burdens on general practice, and setting up single-issue clinics and Urgent Care Clinics in direct competition with existing GPs, general practitioners must be empowered to apply their professional expertise in accordance with their professional and ethical obligations to their patients to first, do no harm. A commodified, fragmented and demoralised general practice workforce is in no-one’s best interests – least of all our patients’.
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