The closely watched GP non-referred attendance bulk-billing rate is simultaneously moving downward and tracking upward.
The latest Medicare quarterly statistics reveal that, despite quarter-on-quarter declines in the GP bulk-billing rate, the 2025 financial year will likely end with a higher overall bulk-billing rate than the previous one.
Nationally, the GP non-referred attendance bulk-billing rate for the March 2025 quarter was 77.3%.
It represents a slight dip on the December 2024 quarter, which had a bulk-billing rate of 77.4%, which itself was a slight dip from the September 2024 quarter, which had a bulk-billing rate of 77.6%.
This puts the 2025 financial year-to-date bulk-billing rate for GP services at 77.4% with one quarter left to go.
The GP bulk-billing rate for the 2024 financial year as a whole was 76.7%, despite it ending with the relatively high June 2024 quarter rate of 78.8%.
In fact, unlike the 2025 financial year – where the bulk-billing rate has consistently trended down quarter-on-quarter – the bulk-billing rate in the 2024 year consistently trended upward or stayed stable quarter-on-quarter. Which makes it somewhat ironic that the 2025 financial year, barring an extreme change in trend between the March and June quarter, looks set to end with a higher average overall bulk-billing rate than the 2024 financial year.
Another notable takeaway from the latest Medicare quarterly statistics is a jump in the average patient contribution per service to $52.41, up from $45.97 in the December quarter.
Related
It’s an unusually large jump; the previous two quarters vary from each other by about one dollar or less.
The national average patient contribution has not exceeded $50 in any quarter since at least September 2019 – as far back as the quarterly Medicare statistics are available online – and has not exceeded $45 across any financial year going back to 2010.
In terms of state and territories, NSW continues to lead the pack in bulk billing.
The NSW GP bulk-billing rate for the March 2025 quarter was 81.6%, followed by Victoria on 78.3% and the NT on 76.1%.
Mount Druitt, in Western Sydney, had the highest GP bulk-billing rates of any suburb in Australia for the March quarter, at 98.3%.
The ACT, meanwhile, had the lowest quarterly GP bulk-billing rate of the states and territories at 52.7%, with WA coming in second-last at 69.4%.
