What has happened
On 3 September 2026 the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Review Advisory Committee released the draft report of its Time-Tiered Working Group. The report finds that the fee structure pays a lower rate per minute for longer consultations, and that this disproportionately affects women general practitioners and women patients. Consultation closes on 15 October 2026 and the final report goes to government by the end of the year.
Women’s Health in the South East (WHISE) is the regional women’s health service for Victoria’s Southern Metropolitan Region, working across ten local government areas and 1.56 million people. WHISE has been putting a version of this finding on the public record for two years.
What the report found about women
The report does not treat the gendered effect as a side observation. It is set out with the data behind it, on both sides of the consulting room desk.
Providers. In 2023 to 2024, women general practitioners provided 40.3 per cent of all non-referred general practice attendances, 47.8 per cent of level C attendances and 52.6 per cent of level D attendances. They provide a disproportionate share of exactly the consultations Medicare pays least per minute for, which is a gender pay gap produced by a fee schedule rather than by anybody’s decision.
Patients. Women accounted for 55.8 per cent of level B claims and 65.5 per cent of level E claims. Women’s share of claims rises as the consultation gets longer. Those are the consultations a practice has the least financial reason to offer.
Antenatal care. Antenatal attendance items are not time-tiered and pay less than the equivalent time-tiered item for a longer visit. A general practitioner who spends half an hour on an antenatal consultation cannot claim the item that half hour is worth.
What is welcome in the draft report
Recommendation 5, that MBS benefits for time-tiered items equitably support appropriate and varied consultation lengths so patients can access care that meets their clinical needs. This is the recommendation that carries the gender finding.
Recommendation 6, that bulk billing incentives be set as a percentage of the MBS fee rather than a flat rate. A flat incentive is a per minute penalty on the long appointment, and it falls hardest on the practitioners and patients who use long appointments most.
Integrating antenatal and non-directive pregnancy counselling into the general time-tiered items. WHISE supports this. Removing a dedicated women’s item sounds like a loss. It is not. The antenatal item pays less than the time tier it competes with, so the change raises what a long antenatal consultation is worth.
What the work in this region already shows
The submission WHISE co-authored with Wellsprings for Women recorded that when women do see a general practitioner, “the consultation times are too short and do not allow them to properly explore their health concerns. Many commented that the GP always seems rushed and overbooked.” That was written in 2024, before any of this had been costed.
At WHISE forums in April 2026, participants named inadequate Medicare rebates and declining bulk billing among the costs producing what they described as a growing two tiered health system. Their strongest and most consistent theme was the experience of not being believed. They asked for women’s accounts of their own bodies to be treated as legitimate clinical evidence from the outset, rather than something repeatedly proven. Being believed takes time, and time is what the fee structure prices lowest.
What we are asking
- Recommend that the rebate per minute no longer falls as the consultation gets longer.
Recommendation 5 should say plainly what it implies. Raising the tiers without stating the principle leaves the same incentive intact under new item numbers. The remedy is not a larger version of the same shape.
- Treat the Time-Tiered Working Group’s finding on women as a key input to the Senate’s Select Committee on Women’s Health.
The Select Committee is examining women’s pain, postpartum care, experiences of medical misogyny, fertility and assisted reproduction, and the regulation of medical devices used in women’s healthcare. Every one of those takes longer than nineteen minutes to raise. A fee schedule that pays less per minute for the long appointment is one of the mechanisms that inquiry is looking for, arrived at from Medicare’s own claims data. The two processes should not report to government without having read each other.
What WHISE will do
WHISE will lodge a submission supporting Recommendations 5 and 6 before the consultation closes on 15 October 2026, and will put the same finding to the Select Committee on Women’s Health alongside the three matters it published on 21 August 2026: that health promotion, primary prevention and recovery be counted alongside treatment; that the physical and mental health streams of the inquiry remain connected; and that peri-urban growth corridors be named alongside regional and rural Australia.
Health services, councils and community organisations across the region can lodge their own submissions. Enquiries: MRACTimeTieredReview@health.gov.au
Where this leaves us
Two years ago women in this region described a health system that did not give them enough time and did not believe them when they used it. A federal review has now found the pricing mechanism behind the first, in its own claims data. None of that evidence had to be commissioned. What remains is a decision about how Medicare prices a woman’s time, and that decision is still open.
Support is available from 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.
Media contact: Dos Hetherington, dhetherington@whise.org.au
Read the accompanying media release: Women in the south east said their appointments were too short. A federal review has now put a number on why.