Ahh, that new financial year feeling.
The dawn of a new financial year brings MBS indexation, verbal consent for bulk billing and sharing-by-default.
Here are all the changes coming to general practice land from Wednesday 1 July 2026.
Assignment of benefit
Following the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s move to delay some of the more contentious assignment of benefit changes, very little will change on a day-to-day level for most GPs.
Digital assignment of benefit provisions will begin, meaning that patients can consent to be bulk billed simply by clicking “yes” on a payment terminal.
Practices can also begin collecting pre-assignment of benefit before the consult even occurs, provided that the GP has a general idea of what items they will be claiming.
Where the bulk billing consent is collected before a consult, but the GP ends up unexpectedly claiming different items or the appointment takes place on a different day, the patient needs to re-consent to bulk billing.
Regardless of when consent is obtained, the GP can still only submit a claim after the consultation has concluded.
The other big change will be the introduction of enduring assignment of benefit for aged care residents, MyMedicare registered patients, and patients of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations.
It will work slightly differently for each setting, according to the latest Department of Health, Disability and Ageing fact sheet.
A patient registered with MyMedicare will be able to make one enduring agreement to receive services from all general practitioners at their MyMedicare practice.
A patient of an ACCHO or Aboriginal Medical Service will be able to make an enduring agreement with their ACCHO or AMS, and they will be able to have multiple agreements with multiple AMS or ACCHO services.
A patient living in a residential aged care home will be able to make multiple enduring agreements with different practitioners.
The exact mechanism for enduring assignment of benefit is expected to be detailed over the coming days.
Sharing by default
Pathologists and radiologists will have to start uploading to My Health Record unless specific exceptions apply.
The upshot is that, while GPs will get faster access to most diagnostic imaging and pathology reports, so will patients.
There will be a five-day delay on patients being able to view the results of anatomical pathology, cytopathology and genetic testing, but GPs will be able to have access to these as soon as they are uploaded.
Some simple pathology reports and limb x-ray reports are already subject to share-by-default rules.
Related
The exemptions to upload include a patient not having a My Health Record, a patient requesting that certain reports are not uploaded, unforeseen technical errors, or a healthcare provider holding a reasonable belief that a report should not be shared due to concerns about the safety or wellbeing of the patient.
Organisations which do not comply with the new sharing by default rules risk being forced to repay any Medicare benefits they received for those services, alongside a fine.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has already stated its intention to add additional types of health information to the sharing by default list, but there are no immediate expansion plans.
Medicare indexation
July 1 is also indexation day; all GP non-referred attendance items will rise by a whopping 2.6%.
As many have already pointed out, this is lower than the CPI increase of 4.2% over the last 12 months.
MBS rebates will be lower in real terms.
An item 23 Level B consult will go from $43.90 to about $45.04 – a difference of roughly $1.14.
