The Surgery Kincumber provides serviced consultation rooms and reception services for independent visiting GPs. The individual GPs solely determine their own fees/billing policies for each patient/consultation. The fee guide in this page is an overall indicative value based on doctors billing practices and by no means the actual final fee. The Surgery Kincumber does not influence the billing practices of doctors who practice here.
Doctors, like any other professional, charge a fee for their service (consultation, procedure, reports, other services). This is called Standard Fee. This fee is often linked to certain item code. For medical/clinical general consultations, procedures etc, they are generally associated with Medicare items. For Workers Compensation claim related matters the fee descriptions are aligned with SIRA (State Insurance Regulatory Authority) codes.
The government (Medicare) provides some money back (refund/rebate) to offset the expense of health care. This is called a rebate. In the olden days, people had to get a tax invoice from doctors and go to Medicare offices to obtain the rebate. Now, things happen faster with automated electronic refunds. Some doctors use services which would facilitate your rebate from medicare to be credited almost instantaneously. Otherwise, your refund is credited to your registered (with medicare) bank account within 1 business day.
If I can get the rebate instantly, can I not just pay the difference?
Unfortunately, Medicare regulations do not allow for that. Possibly this was set up this way, so people will know how much the services actually cost.
If the doctor decides to accept only the rebate as total charge for the consultation (or service), then the doctor is allowed to bill Medicare directly (in bulk). This is called bulk billing. In this circumstance, you do not pay any fee at the surgery after seeing the doctor, but you authorise the doctor to claim the fee by Bulk Billing Medicare directly.
If Bulk Billing is such an easy process, why should I pay a fee?
Medicare was set up to rebate upto 85% of the then prevalent average fee. Hence a lot of doctors felt it was easier to obtain a lesser fee and make things easier for the patients as well as easier work flow for themselves. However, the medicare rebate has not been adjusted by successive governments to reflect the rise in the cost of providing health care. The rebate has been generally increased with a token value, generally less than the CPI or even frozen for nearly 8 years. At the moment (Sept 2025), the rebate is about 40% of the cost of delivering care. As the value of the rebate has substantially eroded over the period of time, it has become unviable for doctors to just accept the rebate alone as a fee and provide quality health care service.
Bulk Billing incentive
Bulk billing incentive is an additional fee the government (Medicare) provides to compensate for the unfairly small rebate. This can make doctors to provide Bulk Billed consultations at a lesser financial disadvantage. (Average rebate with no bulk billing incentive is roughly 40% of the fee, Average rebate with bulk billing is about 60% of the fee). So sometimes doctors try to make it easier on some patients by bulk billing. Until the 30th of Oct 2025, the bulk billing incentive is available only for pension/ concession card holders and children until they have their 16th birthday. From 1st Nov 2025, the incentive will be available for all patients. However, the medicare rebate (the rebate you receive when your consult is not bulk billed) is not being increased. As the rebate + bulk billing incentive together only comes to 60% of the fee, most doctors plan to provide bulk billed visits only for some patients.
Sometimes in a single consultation, there may be multiple services involved. Eg, you see a doctor for a skin check. The skin cancer check may take 21 minutes. It is charged a long consultation fee. The doctor may use liquid nitrogen to burn more than 10 actinic keratosis lesions. It is charged a seperate fee. The doctor may decide to do a biopsy of a skin lesion at the same time. That incurs a seperate fee too. In this situation, the doctor may charge you a standard fee for the skin check consultation, a standard fee for the biopsy procedure, but bulk bill the liquid nitrogen treatment (cryotherapy). So even though you may feel that you just came for a skin check, you are billed multiple items. This is allowed under Medicare regulations.
Some doctors charge a standard fee for some patients (or services) but bulk bill some patients (or services), this is called mixed billing.
Generally there are no gap/out of pocket fee for Work Cover consults. However, the entire fee MUST BE PAID to the doctor after the consultation. A tax invoice will be provided and the whole fee may be claimed from the insurer. In circumstances where the work cover claim is rescinded/withdrawn/rejected/not proceeded and the consult retrospectively transferred to medicare, then a medicare adjusted tax invoice may be provided. Please keep in mind, the equivalent medicare rebate could be of much lesser value. The fee already charged may not be adjusted.
80 Avoca Drive
Kincumber NSW 2251
Darkinjing Country
Tel: 4369 6777
Healthlink: surgking
Email: reception@surgerykincumber.com.au
