The impact of under funding of Medicare, and GP shortages are starting to seriously impact on the cost of patient access to GP services.

GP bulk billing rates have declined sharply in all states over the last five quarters. Falling from just under 90% in the 2021 September quarter to 83.5% in the  2022 September quarter, rates have declined over 6% nationally but in in the ACT and the NT this decline exceeds 10%.

The ACT  has the lowest rate of bulk billing at just over 61%.

 

Bulk Billing Rates Trend
	FY Q1	FY 22 Q2	FY 22 Q3	FY 22 Q4	FY 23 Q1
Australia	89.8%	88.6%	88.1%	87.1%	83.5%
NSW	92.8%	91.1%	90.7%	89.7%	86.8%
Vic	89.7%	89.2%	88.5%	87.4%	83.9%
Qld	88.4%	87.6%	87.2%	86.1%	82.4%
SA	88.1%	87.3%	87.0%	85.9%	81.3%
WA	87.2%	86.0%	85.8%	84.8%	80.4%
Tas	79.3%	78.1%	78.5%	77.4%	72.7%
NT	91.0%	90.4%	84.8%	84.5%	78.6%
ACT	73.7%	70.7%	69.2%	67.7%	61.4%