The official launch of the HealthLink Pro product has stirred up old grievances amongst general practice.
Almost 18 months after the company first flagged the introduction of a paid subscription model, HealthLink Pro has arrived – and GPs are more irate than ever.
The end-to-end encryption tool, which works similarly to Medical Objects, is embedded within several state and federal government workflows.
In order to do a driver’s license assessment in NSW, for instance, practices must have access to HealthLink.
Until now, the software has been free for GPs to use – traditionally, it has been the hospital or the relevant government department which has paid for the service.
The idea behind this, several GPs told The Medical Republic, was that HealthLink was mainly for the benefit of the party receiving the data and that GPs were essentially doing them a favour by agreeing to use it.
But in late 2024, HealthLink announced it would soon be asking GPs – who, it should be noted, have no choice but to use this service – to pay a subscription fee of between $252 and $1000 annually.
It quickly walked this back, re-announcing in July 2025 that “after months of consultation and in close collaboration with the RACGP” it would be introducing a $12 per year “essential” product and a $480 per year “professional” product.
The essential product was “built to keep things as close to today as possible, with continued access to SmartForms, referrals and diagnostics at no cost, plus improved security and contractual protections”, while the professional product includes faster customer service and a chat function.
The 2025 announcement also mentioned that practices can choose not to opt in to either plan and “nothing changes”.
HealthLink Professional officially went live last week.
GPs are wary of the new, tiered approach.
“From a commercial strategic lens, what will [likely] happen is they’ll charge you $12 so that they can get you onto this new tier with some better support … and then after that, they’re just going to keep jacking it up once they’ve got you on the new commercial terms,” a GP who wished to remain anonymous told TMR.
“I’m assuming the old commercial terms that each general practice signs up for are different.
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“A lot of general practices are on HealthLink. They already do pay HealthLink a little bit for their secure messaging product, but eReferrals is a completely different product.
“They’re not supposed to have to pay anything for it, because the hospitals are paying for it.”
From a strategy perspective, the GP was concerned that the free HealthLink product – the one that practices are on by default until they opt for one of the paid models – would be left to degrade, essentially forcing clinics into the $12 per year tier.
“I think what will happen is it will be like the PBS authority hotline,” the anonymous GP said.
“Basically what happened is the government wanted to shift people over to using the online platform, so they made the phone line worse and worse and worse.”
Newcastle GP and practice owner Dr Max Mollenkopf was of the same opinion.
“I assume [the subscription fees] are very small because you need it to start somewhere,” he told TMR.
“And once you have the market captured and paying, you can then rapidly escalate or you can push people off your free tiers quite quickly by reduced features.”
He took issue with the principle of being made to pay for a service that he never asked to use.
“It continues to come back to this idea of ‘GPs should’,” Dr Mollenkopf said.
“There’s this real narrative where everyone else tells us how we should behave, and no one asks us about why we behave in a certain way.
“And this fits with this messaging narrative – ‘you should use our platform’ ‘why?’ ‘Because it makes our life easier’.
‘What is in it for me as a GP? I’ve just got another portal to maintain and potentially another subscription fee.”
TMR contacted HealthLink for comment but did not receive a response before deadline.
