Despite more than 70% of eligible practices registering within the first seven months of the scheme, what should be a simple, streamlined, and efficient process is proving otherwise.
Practices are signing up to MyMedicare in the expectation that future funding will depend on it, according to a new study published last week in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Introduced in October 2023 on the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce’s recommendation, the voluntary patient registration scheme gave patients access to allied health services and nursing support through their registered practice and chronic disease management plans, and GPs the General Practice in Aged Care incentive.
But without specific support to implement the initiative, the scheme was invoking “major frustration” and “considerable administrative burden” for providers, the study found.
Qualitative interviews were conducted from January 2025 to April 2026, with a total of 45 general practice staff across 22 GP-owned practices, including GPs, practice nurses, practice managers, and reception staff, and 50 consumers.
While staff and consumers responded positively to MyMedicare’s goal of encouraging continuity of care, the proposed addition remained unclear and was “confusing and burdensome” in its current form.
Not only did it require “extensive effort” to explain how the scheme operated and to assist with registration, taking precious time from a consultation, but for older patients with cognitive impairment, limited digital literacy, or language barriers, the effect was especially pronounced.
“It was really hard to generate enthusiasm among any of our GPs, any of our practice nurses and any of our reception staff because nobody could see any tangible benefits coming out of it,” said one GP.
According to Services Australia’s annual report for 2025-26, MyMedicare patient registration more than doubled from the previous year, from 3.2 million to 6.5 million. The report found 7600 GP clinics were participating in the voluntary patient enrolment scheme.
In the RACGP’s latest Health of the Nation report, most practice owners (81%) reported their practice was registered with MyMedicare – a figure higher in outer-regional areas than in major cities.
However, according to the study, limited understanding of the scheme’s long-term implications or how it operated, even among GPs, proved another barrier.
“It’s still something I don’t fully understand. I know that… if someone’s registered for MyMedicare, it can open up certain items like for longer consults (telehealth); other than that, I don’t really understand a huge amount about it,” said another GP.
For those who did understand the policy rationale, most could not see how the scheme would enhance continuity of care.
“I didn’t want to see it as a sort of capitation model here in Australia, where people lost the capacity to choose where they access care and who they choose to see for services,” said a GP.
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With 76.9% of adults already having a preferred GP and over 90% a usual practice, the study found that long telephone consultations were the only clear incentive to enrol in MyMedicare, especially for those travelling long distances or requiring interpreters.
Reflectively, after 18 months of operation, fewer than 10% of Australians had enrolled in MyMedicare.
This aligned with RACGP findings, which reported only 23% of MyMedicare-enrolled practice owners said over half their patients were enrolled.
According to the college’s report, just 1% of patients were unable to see a GP when needed in 2024-25, and 67% were able to see their preferred GP when needed.
“Patient registration schemes overseas have demonstrated that it is often patients who already have a regular GP that enrol in these schemes and they do little to increase continuity of care,” the report read.
The study authors said that most often, registering patients fell to practice managers and nurses, and when patients were in residential aged care homes or had cognitive impairment, obtaining consent from family or guardians added to the burden.
For patients who felt there was no change in service delivery – “I am not sure what benefit I am getting [the] last 2 years… not getting any telephone consults,” one consumer said – the lack of perceived benefit proved a limited incentive to register.
Determining whether patients were already registered was described as a largely manual process, most often via MyHealth Record, resulting in opportunity costs because GPs or nurses were required to undertake administrative tasks that could otherwise have been delegated.
Another reported difficulty was the requirement to register at a single physical address, which GPs described as “incongruent with accessing care” when practices had multiple sites within the same organisation.
“We can only bill the patient at their very specific clinic they’ve been seen at …even if their doctor works at both. So, our clinic is a bit different to others. Where a patient might have that half an hour phone call at the wrong clinic and we can’t bill them,” said a receptionist.
Practices being required to re-register patients when they relocated was another administrative complexity.
Opportunistic attempts for practices to capture Medicare income, or a lack of awareness, also led to some patients being unknowingly dual-registered.
Consequently, this prevented them from claiming Medicare for chronic disease management plans, longer consultations, or other allied health visits, which clinicians reported could “override established relationships and fragment patient care”.
Incentivising patient registration and allowing GPs to allocate a broader range of Medicare-subsidised allied health referrals to their MyMedicare patients were proposed solutions
The consumers interviewed were between 36 and 85 years old, and 37 had at least one chronic condition.
Consumers did not require prior knowledge of MyMedicare, nor did they have to be registered to participate. Almost half (46%) were not registered, while a further 26% were unsure whether they were.
Read the full study here.
