What is the MBS (Medicare Benefits Schedule)?

What the MBS is

The Medicare Benefits Schedule, universally shortened to the MBS, is the national list of health services that Medicare subsidises. Every listed service has an item number and a set rebate, and when you provide one of those services you bill against its item number and Medicare pays the rebate. For a GP, this is not a peripheral piece of admin; it is the machinery your entire income runs on, because almost everything you do in a consultation maps to an MBS item.

Coming from the NHS, where you never code a consultation for payment, this is a genuine shift, but the core is far simpler than the size of the schedule suggests: you only need to be fluent in the handful of items you use every day. This guide sits in the Money and practice cluster within the complete relocation guide, alongside earnings and billing models.

The MBS is published and regularly updated by the government, and the authoritative source is MBS Online. Because items, descriptors and rebates change, that is the page to check rather than any static summary, including this one. What follows is the durable structure; the specific numbers always live on MBS Online.

Item numbers

At the heart of the MBS are item numbers, the codes that identify each service. There is an item for a standard consultation, items for longer and more complex consultations, items for care plans, health assessments, procedures, and a great many more. When you finish a consultation, you select the item that matches what you did, and that choice determines the rebate.

The skill is matching the right item to the work you actually did. Bill too low and you undersell your time; bill an item the consultation did not meet and you have a compliance problem. Practices support this with software that prompts likely items. The item you choose also interacts with your billing model, since it sets the rebate you either accept as full payment or charge above.

Consultation levels

The items you will use most are the standard consultation items, which are graded by length and complexity. GP attendances are commonly described in levels, often referred to as Level A through D, running from a brief consultation up to a long, complex one, each with its own item number and rebate. The longer and more complex the care, the higher the level and the larger the rebate.

This grading directly links the time and complexity of your care to what you bill: bill the level that genuinely reflects the consultation, which rewards taking appropriate time with complex patients rather than defaulting to the shortest item. This is also where longer appointments and care plan items start to matter to your income.

Schedule fee vs rebate

Two terms are worth pinning down. Each MBS item has a schedule fee, the government's set fee for that service, and a benefit or rebate, the amount Medicare actually pays, often a percentage of the schedule fee for GP services. The rebate is the figure that matters most day to day, because it is what Medicare hands over.

How this plays into your income depends on your billing model. If you bulk-bill, you accept the rebate as full payment and the patient pays nothing. If you privately bill, you charge above the rebate, the patient pays the difference as a gap, and they claim the rebate back from Medicare. Either way, the MBS rebate is the anchor the whole transaction is built around, which is why understanding it is central to understanding your earnings. Model how the items and rebates translate into income with our GP salary calculator, a guide to help you explore rather than a determination, and confirm current fees on MBS Online.

The items you will use most

Standard consultation levels are the bread and butter, but the MBS is much broader, and the other items are where a lot of the better-rewarded work lives. Around the consultation items sits a handful of common ones you will meet in your first weeks: chronic disease management and mental health care plans, health assessments for eligible patients, immunisations, simple procedures, and telehealth attendances.

These matter clinically, supporting structured, proactive care, and financially, since they reward the longer consultations that structured care requires. Two worth reading up on early are chronic disease and mental health care plan items and telehealth rules, each with its own eligibility. Prescribing connects to the separate Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, so the MBS and PBS between them govern much of your day. Focus your early learning on this core set rather than the whole schedule; your practice and software will surface likely items, and within a month the common ones become reflexive.

How it drives your billing

Put the pieces together and you can see why the MBS sits at the centre of a GP's financial life. Your income under the percentage-of-billings model is a share of what you bill, what you bill is the sum of the MBS items you select, and each item's rebate is set by the schedule. So your fluency with the MBS, choosing the right items for the care you provide, feeds directly into your earnings.

When you weigh a role, the practice's billing model and its support for correct MBS use both matter, which is worth raising while negotiating your contract and assessing what a good job looks like.

Getting it right

MBS billing is subject to compliance, and billing items the care did not meet, whether deliberately or through misunderstanding, can have serious consequences. Accurate billing and good care go together: bill the level that reflects the consultation, document what you did, and use the items you understand. When you are unsure about an item's rules, check MBS Online or ask a colleague rather than guessing. Most GPs learn the schedule on the job within a month or two, and for those arriving on the expedited specialist pathway the orientation and supervised practice period is exactly when this knowledge gets built.

The MBS only becomes relevant once you can bill, so it sits downstream of your registration and your Medicare provider number. How much of your billings you keep then depends on your contractor or employee status and the practice's split, one input into a larger financial picture you weigh against your cost of living.

In summary

The MBS is the national list of subsidised health services, each with an item number and rebate, and it is the backbone of GP billing. You bill the item that matches the service, standard consultations are graded into levels by length and complexity, and how the rebate translates into income depends on your billing model. Learn the items you use on the job, and confirm current items and rebates on MBS Online rather than a static summary.

Sources

These are the primary sources behind this guide. Read them directly and confirm anything time-sensitive on the day.

Frequently asked questions