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When you bulk bill your patient, both of the following apply:
- you accept the Medicare benefit as full payment for the service
- your patient assigns their right to a Medicare benefit to you, so we pay the benefit to you.
When you bulk bill for a service, you can only raise an additional charge to cover the supply of a vaccine. You can’t raise additional charges for things like consumables used or administrative costs.
Learn more about billing procedures, including what additional charges can be raised, on the MBS Online website.
Bulk billing and private billing together
If you provide a few services on a single occasion, you can:
- bulk bill some or all of those services
- privately bill any services you haven't bulk billed.
You can set the charge for the services you privately bill.
If you bulk bill some of the services, you can only raise additional charges such as consumables for the services you privately bill.
If you provide two or more operations on the one occasion, all services must be either bulk billed or privately charged.
Bulk billing for nurse practitioners and midwives
Nurse practitioners or midwives, who provide an approved service, can bill the patient directly or bulk bill us.
If you’re an eligible nurse practitioner or midwife, you can access some items under the Medicare Benefits Schedule and limited items under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme on the PBS website.
Bulk billing incentives
Bulk bill incentive (BBI) items are additional payments made to medical practitioners when billing eligible patients for unreferred services. BBIs can be claimed for a range of services including General Practitioner (GP) consultations, diagnostic imaging and pathology.
For services provided prior to 1 November 2025, BBIs are only accessible to patients who are:
- under the age of 16
- a Commonwealth concession card holder.
All patients eligible for Medicare have access to Medicare BBI for GP consultations. Age and concessional status requirements continue to apply to BBI for diagnostic imaging and pathology services.
Practices and health professionals may also participate in the Bulk Biling Practice Incentive Program. This is in addition to the BBIs.
Record keeping
We recommend keeping records of benefits paid for at least 2 years in case of an audit.
These include any of the following:
- electronic billing information
- notes in practice software
- appointment records
- assignment of benefit forms.