Medicare Changes November 1st 2025

From the 1st of November 2025, the Australian Government introduced a new Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Program (BBPIP), designed to incentivise GP clinics to switch to purely bulk-billing. Clinics that bulk-bill all eligible patients for all eligible services can receive a higher Medicare incentive payment.

Although that may sound good in theory, and whilst BBPIP may benefit some general practices, it isn’t practical for most GP clinics, and especially not for dedicated skin cancer clinics. The specialised nature of skin cancer care requires longer consultations, detailed examinations, and procedural work.  These are all factors that would make a bulk-billing model unsustainable for Molescope.

Molescope Skin Cancer Clinic is a small, privately-owned clinic that focuses on high-quality care for the early detection and treatment of skin cancer, rather than high-volume throughput.

Even with the extra incentives, the only way for a full bulk-billing model to be feasible is for a high volume of short consultations. At Molescope, the vast majority of appointments are comprehensive skin checks, often including dermoscopic examinations and photography. Additional procedures such as biopsies and excisions are also performed.

The operating costs of a dedicated skin cancer clinic such as Molescope include things like medical-grade lighting, dermoscopy tools, photography systems, surgical instruments and consumables, in addition to the regular overheads like staff wages, rent, and insurance. Medicare rebates alone, even with the incentives, do not cover these costs.

At Molescope Skin Cancer Clinic, our highest priority is to ensure patients receive safe, thorough, and effective skin cancer care. Providing this level of care and the quality of service that is important to our patients would not be possible under a bulk-billing model.

The government's desire to increase the number of bulk-billed GP clinics should not be interpreted as the best or only model for a GP clinic. The level of care provided and the unique circumstances of each clinic will determine whether the incentives offered would make it viable for them to switch to a bulk-billing model.  But in the context of a dedicated skin cancer clinic, such as Molescope, where the majority of appointments are annual skin checks, the bulk-billing model doesn't work.

Molescope is a private clinic and appointments do continue to have a gap payment on top of the Medicare rebate. But as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for".  At Molescope Skin Cancer Clinic, you get a team of highly-experienced doctors who are dedicated to the early detection and treatment of skin cancer, and facilities that have been specifically designed for skin cancer medicine.

Our friendly reception staff are always happy to clearly explain any costs involved before a consultation or procedure, including the Medicare rebate and gap payment.

Note: Information provided in this blog is of a general nature and is not a substitute for advice from a medical professional. Please be advised that blog posts are not necessarily written by medical professionals. All care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of information provided, however, no guarantee is made that it is free from error. Mention of any specific products or services in the context of a blog post does not indicate an endorsement of that product or service. This includes any images used in blog posts. Molescope always recommends that any medical advice is sought directly from medical professionals.