On 1 July 2026, the rules for collecting a Medicare assignment of benefits changed for every bulk billing practice in Australia. The old approved form is no longer required, verbal consent is on its way out, and every bulk billed service will soon need a documented agreement behind it.
If that sentence made your admin brain twitch, this guide is for you. Here's what changed, what your assignment of benefits form now needs to include, and a free template you can put on the front desk today.
An assignment of benefits (AoB) is the agreement a patient signs when they're bulk billed. By signing, the patient assigns their Medicare benefit directly to the practitioner, who accepts it as full payment for the service. No AoB, no valid bulk bill claim.
Until this year, that mostly meant the patient signing an approved Services Australia form, or giving verbal consent for telehealth under arrangements left over from the pandemic. A 2023 audit found legal risks in the verbal approach, and the government responded by modernising the whole process.
The updated requirements came into effect on 1 July 2026 under the Health Insurance Amendment (Assignment of Medicare Benefits and Other Measures) Regulations 2025. The headlines:
You can use any written agreement, on paper or electronic, as long as it contains the particulars set out in the Health Insurance Regulations 2018.
Services Australia's guidance explicitly recognises digital methods: an email the patient replies to, consent built into your booking software, or an SMS link to a form the patient accepts with a checkbox.
The agreement can be made before the service (at booking or in the waiting room) or after it (before the claim is submitted).
Only the patient (or a responsible person on their behalf) signs the agreement.
You must keep each completed agreement for 2 years from the date the claim is made, and give the patient a copy if they ask.
That notation was abolished. A responsible person, such as a parent or guardian, signs instead.
There's also a new "enduring" assignment option for ongoing bulk billed GP services, available to patients registered with MyMedicare, residents of aged care homes, and patients of ACCHOs and AMSs.
1 July 2026. The new rules take effect. Any written agreement containing the required particulars is valid, paper or electronic.
Until 1 July 2027. Verbal assignment of benefits is still accepted for all bulk billed services, as a temporary transition measure.
From July 2027. Every bulk billed service needs a documented agreement, and a compliance review can ask to see any agreement from the past 2 years.
That sounds like breathing room, and it is. But the government has been clear that verbal consent is a temporary measure. Even then, verbal consent isn't paperwork-free: you note "assignor verbally agreed" in the signature field, and you must give the patient a copy of the completed agreement. So "we'll just do it verbally until 2027" still leaves you sending and filing a record for every service.
Practices that sort their process now get to do it calmly, one workflow change at a time. Practices that wait get to do it in a June 2027 panic. We know which one your future self would prefer.
Because there's no prescribed form anymore, the burden shifts to you: whatever form you use (some practices call it a bulk billing consent form) must contain the required particulars (sometimes called the assignment of benefit data set). For standard services, that means:
Pathology and diagnostic imaging services have their own additional requirements, and DVA-funded services aren't covered by these rules.
Get any of that wrong and the claim may not hold up in a compliance review. Which is why we built a template that gets it right.
A print-ready AoB form containing every particular required under the new regulations, plus a one-page guide for your front desk. Available as a PDF you can print today and a Google Doc you can copy and adapt to your practice. Works for GPs, specialists and allied health. Free, no strings.
Talk to practice managers this month and you'll hear the same three approaches:
Print a form per appointment, chase the signature at the desk, scan it, file it, repeat per service. Our free template gives you a compliant form to do it with today, so it's a solid stopgap. But it's a lot of paper and a lot of chasing, and none of it goes away on its own.
Some practices are rebuilding their AoB form in generic form tools like Jotform and texting links manually. Points for ingenuity, but now someone owns a form tool, a spreadsheet of responses, a manual filing step, and the job of checking it all still complies when the rules move.
Verbal consent until July 2027, then figure it out. See above regarding the June 2027 panic.
All three share the same underlying problem: the new rules make AoB a per-service, documented, filed-and-retained workflow, and none of the usual tools were built for that.
Our team is building a tool that automates pre- and post-appointment paperwork. Assignment of benefits, from the first request to the filed record, is exactly the kind of job it's built for.
Three things practices feel in the first week.
One gentle, well-timed message, never a pile of paperwork in the waiting room.
Before every visitReminders and follow-ups send themselves, so the front desk isn't chasing forms all morning.
Runs automaticallyEvery form is tracked from sent to filed. You'll always know exactly where things stand.
Tracked end to endHere's the whole journey, from your AoB form to your PMS.
Bring your own or start from a ready-made template, like the assignment of benefits form above.
Choose when things send and when they're due, once, and every task follows along.
One tidy message at the right moment, not seven scattered texts. They accept their AoB with a checkbox on their phone, the exact electronic method described in Services Australia's guidance.
A simple view of who's done what, and a gentle nudge when someone's behind.
Completed forms flow into Gentu, Cliniko or Nookal on their own, with the 2-year retention requirement handled. No re-typing, ever.
The paperwork problem, solved
The template above solves today. Our new tool removes the job entirely. Early access is opening region by region, so tell us a little about your practice and we'll be in touch as it opens in yours.