The cost of living in Australia has risen significantly over the past few years. This includes the cost of accessing health care. Here’s a few ways you can keep costs down when you see your doctor.
- Have a concession card if eligible. There are bulk-billing incentives for GPs when they see patients with a concession card. This does not mean that they have to bulk bill you. However, some GPs will. Here at Woodville South GP, we bulk bill some concession groups. See more here.
Concession cards also allow you to access cheaper medicines on the PBS.
You will also benefit from lower Medicare saftey thresholds – see point 4 below. - Make the most of health assessments and chronic disease management – Most GPs don’t have any out of pocket costs with these items as they optimise your health management and are reimbursed by Medicare a bit better.
Chronic condition management plans and health assessments at WSGP are conducted in conjunction with our experienced nurses. Working with you in this team based environment gives you the most complete care we have to offer.
Chronic disease management appointments can be utilised up to every 3 months, so that’s potentially 4 free visits per year to utilise.
Another bonus of chronic disease management plans is you can access up to 5 Medicare rebates for allied health practitioners (e.g. physiotherapy, podiatry etc) per year, worth about $62 per visit.Mental Health Care Plans allow anyone with a mental health condition to access up to 10 Medicare rebates for psychological sessions, worth between $90-110 per visit.
Mental Health Care Plans might not be bulk-billed everywhere, nor might the psychology sessions, but the gap does count towards your safety net (see below). - Book long appointments if you have multiple or complex issues: Most GPs will run on 15 minute appointment intervals, which realistically gives you about 12 minutes accounting for documentation. So if you have multiple issues, you may need to return with another appointment to address what was left out. Even though longer appointments cost more initially, it may mean you don’t have to pay the cost of another appointment, let alone taking more time out to see the doctor.
Common examples of when you should make a double appointment include:
– Mental health issues or to organise a mental health care plan
– If you’re seeing us after finding out you’re pregnant
– If you have multiple issues you want to address
– When there’s paperwork involved. - Know and utilise your safety-nets: Medicare and the PBS have safety-nets in place to limit the out of pocket costs you pay for medical services and medications respectively. The medical services covered include GP and other specialist consultations, pathology and scans and allied health/psychology visits where you receive a Medicare rebate back for part of the fee (eg as part of a care plan). Note this doesn’t cover in-hospital costs.
Medicare’s safety net kicks in at $834.50 for concession and Family Tax Benefit Part A ($2615 for non-concession). PBS safety net starts at $277.20 for concession and $1694 for non-concession. Remember you can combine your family’s spend to reach these sooner.
For a concession card holder, if you had a year of lots of medical appointments and doctor visits, it would be rare to pay much more than $1000 in out of pocket costs in that year.
If you’re taking multiple medications, this would be capped at $277.20 per year.
Gap fees per year vs how much you would actually pay due to the Medicare Safety Net:Total yearly gap fees in $ Concession Non-concession 1000 867.6 1000 2000 1067.6 2000 3000 1267.6 2692 4000 1467.6 2892 5000 1667.6 3092