National Health Performance Authority, Healthy Communities: Bulk-billed GP attendances, 2012–13

Bulked billing is an arrangement in which a GP bills Medicare directly for any eligible medical or allied health service that the patient receives, and imposes no other 'gap payment' on the patient. In this arrangement the provider accepts the Medicare benefits as full payment for the service and the patient assigns their right to a Medicare benefit to the service provider.

GP attendances are Medicare benefit-funded patient/doctor encounters, such as visits and consultations, for which the patient has not been referred by another doctor. GP attendances exclude services provided by practice nurses and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners on a GP’s behalf.

In terms of “Broad Type of Service’ Groups, GP attendances comprise all items in Broad Type of Services Groups ‘A’ – GP/VRGP non-referred attendances, ‘M’ - Enhanced Primary Care and ‘B’ Non-referred other attendances as published in official MBS statistics by the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health.

For MBS data, Medicare Local was determined having regard to the enrolment postcode for each person from the last MBS service of any type, processed by the Department of Human Services in 2012–13. All MBS services for each individual processed in 2012–13, were attributed to the postcode in question.

MBS postcode level data were allocated to Medicare Local regions using concordance files provided by ABS.

Numerator based on Medicare (MBS) total GP attendances bulk billed and denominator based on MBS total GP attendances, from data provided by the Department of Health for the financial year of processing, 2012–13.

Before MBS data are published by the NHPA all confidential data cells are suppressed.

The current definition of confidential data is as follows:

• For number of MBS services:
  • if number of services is less than 6 or
  • if number of services is equal to or greater than 6 but
    • one provider provides more than 85% of services or two providers provide more than 90% of services or
    • one patient receives more than 85% of services or two patients receive more than 90% of services.
• If data on number of services is confidential, corresponding data on other measures such as MBS benefit paid is also regarded as confidential