The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing says the number of Bulk Billing PIP signups has now tipped 3800.
Close to 40% of the clinics signed up to the Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Payment (BB PIP) program were formerly mixed billers, a Department of Health, Disability and Ageing spokesperson told delegates at the RACGP Practice Owners Conference on Saturday.
New figures from the DoHDA also reveal that the national GP bulk billing rate has officially tipped 80% (depending on how one counts).
DoHDA director of bulk billing clinic design and implementation Bianca McCulloch confirmed that 48% of the GP clinics signed up to MyMedicare were now also signed up to the BB PIP.
“So far, registrations have occurred faster than we had expected,” she told delegates.
“We had modelled that we would were expecting around 3600 practices to have registered within the first two years, or by the end of the first two years, and we’ve just tipped over 3800 practices already.
“It’s been a really steep uptake of the program, exceeding our initial modelling and our expectations.
“We’re very pleased to see so many practices registering, and of course that’s having fantastic impact on the bulk billing rate.”
She also presented a state and territory breakdown of clinics signed up to the BB PIP.
The jurisdiction with the highest proportion of sign-ups was the Northern Territory, where 81% of all GP clinics were on the BB PIP.
The Australian Capital Territory, meanwhile, had the lowest proportion of clinics signed up to the BB PIP at just 19%.
Western Australia was the next-lowest, at around 31%, followed by Victoria and Queensland, both at 41%, and Tasmania at 47%.
Rounding out the top three were Victoria at 52% and New South Wales at 56%.
“The expanded bulk billing incentive items and the introduction of the BB PIP has certainly led to the largest year-on-year quarterly jump in bulk billing in 20 years, excluding the pandemic years,” Ms McCulloch said.
According to data published on Monday, the GP non-referred attendance bulk billing rate for the financial year to March 2025 was 77.4%, whereas this year’s was 79.8%.
While 2.4 percentage points may seem small in real terms, it’s actually quite impressive in Medicare terms.
The GP bulk billing average for this time period has not exceeded the 80% level since the 2022-23 financial year, when numbers were still being artificially inflated due to the vaccine rollout.
Because the 79.8% figure is calculated as an average of GP bulk billing from July 2025 to March 2026, it includes a significant chunk of data which was collected before the bulk billing reforms came into effect in November 2025.
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This means 79.8% is an underestimate of the current bulk billing rate.
Fortunately, a separate dashboard published by the department on Monday also calculates the GP bulk billing rate for just January to March 2026, cutting out the pre-reform months included in the financial year to date data.
This document places the GP bulk billing rate at 81.9%, which it claims is 4.6 percentage points higher than it was 12 months earlier.
Nationally, it estimates that 92.7% of concession card holders are being bulk billed, along with 72.5% of non-concession card holders.
The next step for the department will be to target practices which it believes will benefit from the BB PIP program but have not yet signed up.
“Out of our original modelling, there’s around 1000 practices that we think will be better off under the measure, but haven’t yet registered,” Ms McColloch said.
“We’ll be working with PHNs in local areas to talk to those practices and help understand any potential barriers or any reasons why they might not be choosing to join and provide some more information about potential benefits to revenue for those practices.”
The 2026 RACGP Practice Owners Conference was held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre on 23 and 24 May.
Has your BB PIP payment been significantly delayed or reduced? You are not the only one. Please email Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
