COVID-19 vaccine support items coming to an end

Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items for COVID-19 vaccine suitability assessments, and associated items, are coming to an end – a move that the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA) says signals a return to ‘business as usual’.

Effective from 1 July, the requirement to bulk bill an assessment for a patient’s suitability for a COVID-19 vaccination will be removed and will see GPs permitted to use general attendance items for these consultations.
 
‘This measure recognises the shift of the national response to COVID-19 from an emergency management response to a response which manages COVID-19 like other endemic diseases,’ DoHDA said.
 
Speaking to newsGP, Dr Michael Bonning, Deputy Chair of the RACGP Expert Committee – Funding and Health System Reform, said it is ‘always disappointing to lose dedicated MBS funding’, but that GPs have been aware that the items were temporary.
 
‘The pathway out of the pandemic has been a rocky one for lots of people, [but] it’s important that as a community of practice we put COVID into our normal practical routines and that, to some extent, we put it in the rear-view mirror as being a singularly large focus of general practice activity,’ he said.
 
‘We spent a lot of our time being up to date and available to members of the community to help them understand the value of a COVID vaccination, the importance of it and worked through that with them.
 
‘By this point, though, I would expect that most people have made up their minds about how COVID vaccination fits into their life and our responsibility is much more now about the prompt or reminder, like we might do for the flu vaccine or other vaccinations, to engage them in taking their opportunity to get vaccinated.’
 
The first dedicated COVID-19 item numbers were introduced in March 2020, as part of a $2.4 billion health package to supporting Australia’s response to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Then in March 2021, item numbers for COVID-19 vaccine suitability assessments were brought in.
 
There are currently 13 remaining MBS item numbers dedicated to COVID-19, all of which are due to cease, including: 93644, 93645, 93646, 93647, 93653, 93654, 93655, 93656, 10660, 10661, 93660, 93661, and 90005.
 
With the bulk billing requirements set to be removed, practices will be able to set their own fees, which the department acknowledges ‘may be more than the relevant Medicare benefit’. However, bulk-billing incentives will still be payable if a practice chooses to bulk bill an eligible patient for the service.  
 
Asked whether he thinks the funding change will impact vulnerable groups, Dr Bonning said that ‘always remains a challenge’.
 
‘It’s because of the need for time to explain, but also often we will need to go somewhere to provide that vaccination and/or we will need to meet the individual where they are,’ he said.
 
‘In doing so, these kinds of eligibility items did help ensure the viability and financial appropriateness of those kinds of interventions.
 
‘So, in losing that, we always have to be really mindful that there are, I would hope, through health services that are not primarily funded under the MBS, a step up from them in that space; that residential aged care facilities, group care homes, others are organising ways to ensure that residents have systematic ways to access vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, so that the responsibility doesn’t fall only on the GP.’
 
The change will bring MBS billing arrangements for COVID-19 vaccination in line with other vaccinations, including those on the National Immunisation Program Schedule.
 
The standard MBS rules will continue to apply to attendance items, which means the service must be provided by a medical practitioner for an MBS benefit to be paid.
 
‘It cannot be provided by a suitably qualified health practitioner on behalf of a medical practitioner,’ the DoHDA said.
 
Dr Bonning says this is a downside to the funding change.
 
He says an important component of the COVID-19 vaccine items is that they have demonstrated a move away from traditional operations by highlighting that a practice nurse ‘could reasonably vaccinate someone, and the practice could be paid for it on behalf of the GP’.
 
‘I want to recognise that in the long term, that outcome of the COVID-19 vaccination MBS item numbers is actually one of the most important signals to Government – but also to the profession as a whole and the MBS,’ Dr Bonning said.
 
‘When we can appropriately engage our practice nurses, we can do phenomenal amounts of work in ways that allow for everyone on the team to use their respective skills really effectively.
 
‘At the moment for many other items, the idea that I would need to be present for a vaccination, as opposed to being present in the practice and having someone else providing those on my behalf, it’s just a really important learning from this period of time.’
 
As of 7 May 2025, 73.7 million COVID-19 vaccinations have been administered in Australia.
 
Dr Bonning said the item numbers played an important role in providing a pathway for more than half of the vaccination efforts.
 
‘Even though governments stood up massive vaccine centres and poured huge amounts of money into those things, it was the quiet industriousness of general practice that did the majority of vaccinating of Australia and that should always show Government how efficient, capable, no nonsense and here to help general practice is,’ he said.
 
‘In that time there was nothing that we couldn’t achieve, even though there were lots of blockers in our way in terms of vaccine access and delivery schedules, and changes to vaccines and community sentiment.
 
‘We as GPs still did the majority of the work and we did it hugely efficiently and with, in the end, quite a minimum of fuss.’
 
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COVID-19 MBS practice nurse vaccination vaccine suitability