Reduce your medical costs
Your doctor, specialist, surgeon, anaesthetist, pathologist or radiologist all charge for the medical treatments they provide in hospital.
If the service or treatment is recognised and claimable from Medicare, then Defence Health can help reduce or even eliminate the cost to you.
As a private patient receiving medical treatment in hospital, Medicare pays 75% of the fee as determined by the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). Defence Health will pay the remaining 25% of the MBS fee.
Some doctors may charge above the MBS fee. This can result in out-of-pocket expenses. Defence Health can help reduce or avoid these extra expenses with our Access Gap Cover and No-Gap Agreements.
- Access Gap Cover - Ask your doctor to use Defence Health Access Gap Cover. You will have either no out-of-pocket expenses, or prior to your treatment you will be given an estimate of the costs you will have to meet. A list of doctors who may be willing to apply our Access Gap Cover schedule of fees is available on the Search for doctors page.
- No-Gap Agreements - Defence Health has negotiated No-Gap Agreements with a number of diagnostic service providers. For example, if you receive services from a radiologist or pathologist they will send the bill directly to Defence Health for payment.