This year’s average national healthcare rating reached 7.4 out of 10 – the highest score since October 2021, according to the latest Australian Healthcare Index report.
Patients are giving GPs top marks, but cost-of-living pressures are keeping many out of the waiting room, and some are turning to AI chatbots for medical advice instead.
The eighth edition of the Australian Healthcare Index report, produced by booking engine Healthengine and non-profit organisation Patients Australia, surveyed 6244 participants in June 2026.
Healthengine CEO Dan Stinton said at the annual Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) summit today that the biggest barrier to accessing care remained cost.
“For the third year running, almost three-quarters of those surveys found costs had an impact on healthcare decisions,” he said.
“The more that people are delaying their care, the more complicated their condition becomes typically, and the more this is going to cost the healthcare system overall,” Mr Stinton said.
Among those who rated Australian healthcare between eight and 10, the availability of bulk billing (45%) was the most cited reason for their satisfaction.
Among those who rated the healthcare system between one and four, the top six reasons for their rating were healthcare being too expensive (44%), lack of bulk billing at enough GPs (33%) or specialists (24%), and difficulty securing appointments (26%).
NSW was the highest-rated state, with all states and territories except the Northern Territory and the ACT recording an increase on the previous year.
For the first time, ED wait times – a long-standing top-three finisher – were ranked the highest-priority issue (36%), ahead of out-of-pocket specialist costs (33%) and private health insurance (PHI) value for money (26%). PHI value for money was among the top three for the third consecutive year.
GP wait times (12%), on the other hand, were the least of consumer concerns.
When it came to go-to advice for non-emergency health concerns, GPs topped the scoreboard for the fifth consecutive year, albeit dipping below 50% for the first time, finishing at 43%.
Google search (21%) remained the primary alternative, while AI chat tools (11%) ranked third, outperforming healthcare websites or call lines.
Mr Stinton attributed this to an increase in young people using ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini – a trend he said would become more visible in subsequent years.
AI, a matter of convenience
For the first time, AI was featured in the report, which found that more than one-third of participants had used or interacted with AI tools in relation to their healthcare over the previous 12 months.
“It’s a bit lower than I expected,” Mr Stinton said at the summit.
Most often, it involved a general AI assistant searching for general health information (51%), an online self-diagnosis or symptom-checker tool (28%), or automated AI messages from their GP clinic (16%) – such as an AI receptionist.
Most participants (57%) reported being satisfied with the AI output. Among those aged 65 years or older, they were not only the least likely to interact with AI (22%) but also reported the highest satisfaction rate (63%).
AI satisfaction was most often due to its availability when needed (50%), easily understandable explanations (45%), and time savings (44%).
“Another reason is that they are able to ask questions that perhaps are quite sensitive, that they would be reluctant to say to their regular GP,” the Healthengine CEO said.
“If patients come to see this as a replacement or consider this as a replacement for seeing their regular care team… that’s going to have consequences,” he said.
But when it came to the top three concerns about AI being used in Australian healthcare, the most common were AI making mistakes or misdiagnosing (53%), losing human interaction with healthcare providers (44%), and privacy and personal health data-related concerns (36%).
“We want to build AI into software that patients can trust,” Mr Stinton said.
In practice, this meant making it obvious when AI was in use, ensuring human oversight, and avoiding complete reliance on its output, he said.
For example, Mr Stinton told the summit that using an AI receptionist to field calls, by explaining the time saved by speaking to AI rather than a receptionist, increased patients’ willingness to engage with the AI by approximately 15%.
“If you’re declaring that you’re using AI, you’re selling the benefit, and then the patient typically is pretty happy to engage with it.”
GP care is high-quality, but funds to see them are low
GPs received their highest rating since the Australian Healthcare Index launched in 2021, with 90% of participants reporting they had a regular GP clinic.
Good-quality care (78%) and good medical advice (75%) were among the top reasons for GP recommendations, while poor medical advice or misdiagnosis and out-of-pocket costs, both at 36%, were the top reasons against participants recommending a GP.
Related
However, out-of-pocket costs remain a major accessibility issue, with more than a third (34%) of participants reporting they planned to see the GP less often because of costs, while 26% reported delaying a GP visit. Some (9%) avoided a GP altogether.
Notably, out-of-pocket costs of specialists most often meant that patients relied on their GP (27%).
Overall, 73% reported that the recent increase in their cost of living had impacted their healthcare decisions, with delayed or missed GP care the third most common care affected.
Those aged 18 to 34 and 35 to 54, 81% and 79%, respectively, were far more likely to have their health decisions impacted by costs than their older counterparts.
This is despite 67% of participants being bulk billed at their most recent GP visit – with 43% reporting they no longer had to pay out-of-pocket costs for GP visits.
Compared with last year, when only 10% reported paying nothing, “the uptick in bulk billing is welcome news”, the report read.
Correspondingly, just over a third (36%) reported they still had to pay, with those who paid most often paying between $41 and $60 (16%), down from 36% last year.
Despite the recent pushback against expanding pharmacists’ prescribing authority, an overwhelming 90% of survey participants said they would like pharmacists to be able to prescribe for certain health conditions.
Moreover, convenience remained the main reason people wanted pharmacists to be given additional capabilities, including managing conditions when GPs were unavailable (60%) and being open outside regular GP hours (55%).
For those most opposed to the expansion, almost half were concerned about a lack of diagnostic skills (49%) and access to comprehensive patient medical records (44%).
Read the full report here.
The Medical Software Industry Association (MISA) held its summit in Sydney on 5 November.
