More than one hundred GP clinics in WA have signed up to the federal government’s Bulk Billing Incentive Program since it launched last month.
Nationally, figures suggest almost 3000 clinics have signed up for the incentives which would see them take home a 12.5% incentive payment, split between the practice and individual GPs.
The $7.9 billion program aims to see 90% of GP practices fully bulk billing all consultations by 2030.
Just one month after the incentives came into play on 1 November the number of bulk billing practices across the country appeared to be increasing.
Speaking during Parliamentary Senate Estimates in December, First Assistant Secretary of the Primary Care Division Mark Roddam confirmed that as of November 30 some 2902 clinics across Australia had signed up to the program.
Of those, 1675 – or 58% – were already registered as fully bulk billing practices. Some 1092 were previously registered as mixed billing and 135 were entirely new to MyMedicare with no established billing information.
In WA, 176 clinics had signed up to the program. Of those, 80 were already fully bulk billing practices.
Nationally the figures were:
- Western Australia: 176 (80 previously bulk billing)
- New South Wales: 1160 (776)
- Victoria: 803 (449)
- Queensland: 505 (271)
- South Australia: 148 (51)
- Tasmania: 51 (18)
- Australian Capital Territory: 15 (8)
- Northern Territory: 44 (22)
The figures were revealed in response to questions from Shadow Health Minister Senator Anne Ruston on the program’s progress and the government’s roadmap to achieving its ambitious target.
She said the government had released “big headlines” around bulk billing targets but no roadmap on how these targets would be met.
“Somehow we are on this trust journey with the government,” she said.
“How can we know you’re on track to meet your target, if you don’t have any measures to understand that?
She also queried whether practices had begun to receive the incentive payment since singing up to the program.
Department of Health officials confirmed that while practices may have signed up, they would need to provide confirmation that all consultations are fully bulk billed before receiving the incentive payment.
It was a process they would be going through “in the next couple of months”. They did not provide any details on a roadmap to achieving its 90% target.
Figures released by the Federal Department of Health in November showed the overall number of patients being bulk billed in WA had fallen from 70.2% to 69.9% between September last year and the same time this year.
RELATED: Less than 70% of patients in WA bulk billed, new stats reveal
The statistics come from the first quarter of the 2025/2026 financial year, prior to the bulk billing incentive coming in.
Nationally, the rate of bulk billing remained unchanged from this period last year, staying at 77.6%.
In WA GPs have remained sceptical on whether the bulk billing targets will be met, despite billions in funding.
RELATED: Bulk billing incentives are here – what WA GPs really think
A small-scale survey of West Australian GPs carried out by Medical Forum showed just two of 29 who responded said their clinics were signing up to be part of the program.
In one of those practices all patients were already bulk billed and in the other 90% of patients were already bulk billed.
All the GPs who would not be signing up to the program said it was not financially viable. One respondent said they currently bulk bill 80% of their patients and it would “cost me too much to change”.
Bulk billing was also a hot topic at the 2025 RACGP annual conference (GP25) where Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was grilled on how he expected the program to work.
Minister Butler has repeatedly suggested that under the scheme GPs who offer universal bulk billing would earn more than $400,000, and three quarters of GPs already earn $280,000 a year.
RELATED: Could GPs earn $400k a year?
Bu this figure has been widely questioned by GPs and leading doctors, including the AMA (WA).
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