Online Consultation with an Australian GP: What to Expect, What It Costs

Most general-practice care can be delivered online, with sensible limits. The Australian Department of Health and Aged Care has expanded telehealth Medicare items significantly since 2020, and most GP-level consults are now claimable.

Things online consults are well-suited to:

• Repeat scripts where you have a stable, established condition
• Cold and flu, sore throat, sinus, mild ear problems, simple cough
• Urinary tract infections in adults
• Skin problems where a photo or video is enough — rashes, mild infections, acne, eczema flares
• Mental-health check-ins, mood, anxiety, sleep, and short-course interventions
• Medical certificates for work, study, and carer's leave
• Specialist and pathology referrals
• Chronic-condition reviews — diabetes, asthma, hypertension, contraception
• Lifestyle and prevention conversations, including weight, smoking, alcohol, and screening

Things that are usually not appropriate for an online consult:

• Anything requiring a hands-on physical exam — abdominal pain that needs palpation, a lump that needs feeling, a chest that needs listening to
• Procedural work — wound care, suturing, joint injections, IUD insertion or removal
• Complex paediatric assessments, particularly in babies under three months
• Anything time-critical — chest pain, stroke symptoms, severe shortness of breath, major trauma, severe allergic reaction
• First-time prescriptions for some controlled medications, where Schedule 4 and Schedule 8 rules require an in-person consult or prior treating-doctor relationship
• Mental-health crisis presentations that need immediate in-person safety assessment

A good GP will be honest about this from the first minute of the call. If your problem isn't right for telehealth, you'll be redirected — usually to a clinic, an after-hours service, an ED, or 000 depending on what's needed.

This is where most people get caught out, so it's worth being precise.

Medicare and telehealth. Most online GP consults attract a Medicare rebate under the standard MBS items. Bulk billed for eligible patients with a valid Medicare card.

The 12-month rule. For most non-urgent online consults, Medicare requires that you've seen a GP — or a doctor at the same practice — face-to-face at least once in the past 12 months. This rule was introduced to keep telehealth tied to ongoing GP care, not as a stand-alone first-contact channel.

Exceptions to the 12-month rule include:

• After-hours urgent telehealth consults
• People in MMM 6–7 areas (very remote Australia) under specific items
• People experiencing homelessness
• Some specific chronic-disease, mental-health, and women's-health items
• People in residential aged care under designated items
• Some early-pregnancy and contraception items

If you don't qualify for a Medicare item, the consult is private. Private fees vary widely — typically $50–$120 for a standard online GP consult.

Other costs to factor in:

• Pathology and imaging referrals are free for most patients with bulk-billed providers, but private clinics charge their own fees.
• A script issued online is the same as a script written in person — you'll pay the pharmacy fee or co-payment under the PBS.
• Specialist referrals are bulk billed where eligible; the specialist visit is a separate cost.

The simplest rule of thumb: if you have a regular GP or have seen one in the past year, your online consult will usually be bulk billed. If you don't, you may pay a private fee — but the cost is normally still well under what a private after-hours service charges.

A well-run online consult feels closer to a focused phone call with a friend who happens to be a doctor than to anything you'd recognise from old-school telemedicine.

Before the consult. You'll usually fill in a short pre-consult questionnaire. This is where you list symptoms, current medications, allergies, and what you're hoping to get from the visit. At Abby, this is also where Abby AI gets to work — it pulls together your history, flags anything important, and prepares the consult brief for the doctor. None of this replaces the consult; it just means the doctor isn't starting from a blank page.

During the consult. The GP will introduce themselves, confirm your identity (Medicare or photo ID), and run through the same structured history they'd run through in a clinic. Expect specific, sometimes blunt questions — duration, character, severity, red flags, prior treatments, family history if relevant. They will share the screen if they need to show you anything, request photos if helpful, and explain their thinking out loud.

At the end. You'll get a clear plan: what the working assessment is, what (if anything) is being prescribed, what tests have been ordered, what referrals are being made, what to watch for, and when to come back. Scripts and certificates are issued electronically and are usable immediately. Pathology and imaging requests are sent to the lab of your choice.

Afterwards. A consult summary is added to your record. If you're seeing the same online-first clinic again, the next doctor — even if it's a different GP — will see the full thread. That continuity is the whole point.