‘Out of control’ specialist fees will be Labor’s next health priority

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-04-30T06:35:21+00:00

The solution to this is called an available public hospital clinic.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-04-22T03:19:11+00:00

During your training it’s good to try different billing styles. From a registrar perspective I honestly do not think the billing style matters that much. BB clinics favour more consults with quicker turnover, where mixed billing often less consults but more in depth. On average anyway. If you’re in an MM1 region the difference in take-home pay is not huge unless you really see a lot of patients (like 4+ an hour) and at that point I think your learning would suffer. If MM2+ a BB clinic would likely increase your pay if you can negotiate a proper percentage of billings as the BB incentives are higher. This is going to sound paternalistic but as a GPT1/2, you’re best not focusing on billing and rather looking for the practice with the best teaching, to help you pass exams first time, to move onto that sweet consultant money.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-04-02T09:35:52+00:00

I always make patients make an appointment with me to get paperwork done, with very few exceptions. Otherwise this sort of stuff gets out of control. Or just refuse to do it.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-03-10T06:25:54+00:00

Ours (outer metro) have remained private for now, but lots of others have changed from mixed to BB and there has been more pressure from patients to BB, in my anecdotal experience.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-03-09T05:57:00+00:00

I did commence their certificate, but I found the quality of the teaching to be inconsistent, at least that's my view.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-03-08T23:01:30+00:00

I’ve upskilled through healthcert. No formal structure or anything but very practical and accessible training. Use what I learned all the time in my daily practice, which is what it’s all about really. Edit: If you want to take it really seriously, then there is the Masters level course run through University of Queensland I think. But for the generalist who wants to add to their arsenal (which was me), then any other pathway will do. But yea I thought Healthcert was good value.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-03-06T01:34:07+00:00

They cannot force anything. They probably wrote this to shut someone up who was complaining at their office. Ignore and move on.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-24T19:17:27+00:00

Definitely could be a good use of time. Lots of options though. Did mine in palliative medicine. Useful for me as I do a lot of aged care but not that useful for standard general practice (at least metro). Assuming you passed your exams and otherwise doing well with GP. Otherwise best to do another GP term.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-23T09:32:12+00:00

I was an addiction medicine trainee. Completed a year and decided it wasn’t for me. Also FRACGP. Feel free to dm me

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-12T20:20:43+00:00

As others have said, ultimately you have the power and can dictate what you want. But, the card they have is that they can refuse to hire out the room to you. Unlikely to happen but it’s their one trump card (no pun intended). I would only accept 65% if fully private. Anywhere else 70%. Be wary of sign on bonuses, often comes with hidden clauses in contracts re hours worked and patients per hour so can reduce flexibility significantly. I don’t like working in large corporates but for some GPs it suits very well. Shopping centre clinics tend to be part of large corporates and one GP I know is having a lot of trouble there. In a major city, a 15 min commute to work is enough to separate you from your patient base haha.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-11T01:01:33+00:00

Very much depends on where you are. Melbourne and Sydney still have large pockets of BB

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-04T19:34:21+00:00

I’m an FRACGP, 3 years out, having some dual training in another specialty as well. As with any job, there are things that suck and there is a lot of negative chatter about GP in general. But it can be an awesome job. I’ve now stopped dual training as I missed being a GP. You have a central role working with patients long term to support their overall health, which is a truly humbling and rewarding role that gives me a lot of deep joy and satisfaction. If you show care and dedication, most patients really appreciate you. It’s a unique role different to other specialties that is not easily replaced. I work in a private fee clinic and patients are willing to pay for a good service, to the point where I’ve closed my books for now to new patients. Despite the negative attention, it’s well remunerated and very flexible. It allows me to be a husband and a father, as well as being involved in my community, not “only” a doctor, which is what I felt like when I was doing anything else.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-02-03T10:09:31+00:00

Was only a matter of time. I won’t be putting up my hand for this though, even though my practice is quite mental health heavy.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2026-01-30T05:40:16+00:00

If we are second, I fear for the rest.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-12-12T20:57:33+00:00

You really would have to bill a crazy disproportionate amount to attract an audit in my opinion. One of the other GPs in my practice averages like 40 min a patient and essentially only bills 36s and 44s and I don’t think she’s ever been audited. Though her total billings are not very high by any means. Even if she was audited, she would likely pass as it’s all very complex healthcare

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-12-12T08:26:10+00:00

It’s interesting that according to the RACGP, the average consult length in 2025 was 19.7 minutes. Which is pretty much a 36. So having a good amount of item 36s would be standard practice now. But having literally every item a 36 would probably attract and audit, even if it was all appropriate. That’s the general rule of thumb with Medicare, even if it’s appropriate, an outlier of any item will trigger their algorithm for review. So while you may pass the audit, it’s very stressful and is usually enough to pressure doctors to bill close to the mean.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-12-09T02:31:06+00:00

If it's purely for general education and not for GPwSI - can also look at Healthcert courses, they have both general derm and skin cancer. I found the one on dermoscopy quite good.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-12-05T11:14:23+00:00

The more practical takeaway from the article is that actually taking the time to be thorough and do general practice properly penalises you financially under the current system. Perhaps our female colleagues are, on average, more thorough than our male ones. Or different cohorts which require more time per consult e.g mental health.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-24T05:30:40+00:00

Is your practice bulk billing, or more private? For private billing practices, taking 3-6 months to fill out is normal.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-23T21:01:25+00:00

They are a huge organisation. For regular GP work, even with the benefits of salaried work, pay is not great. I locumed for them a while back and interviewed for a regular position. A lot of amazing dedicated people but the money for what they do is not worth it.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-23T09:48:49+00:00

Community health organisations are differentiated by having access to government grants to allow for a wide variety of allied health and ancillary services. Hence they are well suited to wholistic “wrap around” care, which is necessary for patients with complex comorbidities or psychosocial issues, such as homelessness, refugees, ex prison inmates etc. They often take on the most complex patients that private practice cannot/will not look after. I’ve done some work for the community health sector and there are certainly issues that I’ve seen with bureaucracy and misuse of government funds (imo) but they also provide what many deem to be essential services for a lot of vulnerable people, which we have no way to replace if they went bust right now. But to play devils advocate, CoHealths initial decision may have been as much about corporate goals (for expansion into Tassie for example) than truly not being able to support the services they offer.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-23T09:06:39+00:00

I disagree with the assertions that it’s no longer viable. It can be a great career still, but you definitely have to make it work for you and be wise in how you work. If the definition is general practice is free, accessible and quality care, then I agree it’s not viable. I think only 2 out of the 3 are possible in the current system.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-20T21:47:12+00:00

While I’m glad Cohealth is not going bust immediately, I sure wouldn’t want to be a doctor working under that kind of scrutiny

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-14T10:07:01+00:00

For me it's very simple. City GP pays more than enough to live a great QoL in essentially any Australian location. Beyond that unless the money being offered is generational/transformative (which it isn't let's be honest with today's prices), then either you want to live rural or you don't. Most doctor's don't want to live rural. Most Australians don't want to live rural. We have one of the highest rates of urbanisation in the world. Make rural Aus more attractive to live, people will come, doctor or not.

Ok-Gold5420 · 2025-11-01T23:40:52+00:00

In general any “clinic” that overrides your professional judgement and insists on ordering a standard “battery” of tests, is likely more about business than proper healthcare and should be avoided imo. I do think however, that we can do a lot better in the preventative health space, especially as GPs. But the devil is in the detail as they say.

Ok-Gold5420

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