National Australia Bank has published the 2026 edition of its Health Insights Report, the fifteenth year of a survey series tracking how Australians use and rate their healthcare (NAB Behavioural and Industry Economics, October 2026). This year's report is the first of two parts and reads the system through the patient's eyes, drawing on a representative survey of more than 1,000 Australians. Three findings are pertinent to general practice. Patients are using more care than they were a year ago. They are being bulk billed more often. They also continue to separate the care they receive from the system that delivers it. That separation is where practice owners have an opportunity.
The gap between my care and the system
Satisfaction with the care patients received for their own condition rose to 7.6 out of 10 in 2026, continuing a slow climb from 7.4 in 2023, with 60% giving their care a high rating. Overall satisfaction with healthcare in Australia sits at 6.5, with only 35% giving the system a high rating. That gap has persisted across all four years of the survey's published trend.
The report reads this as trust becoming more conditional and relationship-based. Patients distinguish between confidence in the practitioner in front of them and frustration with the wider apparatus around that practitioner. I have sat on both sides of this, as a practising GP in a rural town and as a director of health organisations, and I find it credible. Patients have always been able to hold both views at once: my doctor is good, the system is not. For a practice owner, the gap is useful news, because most of what patients complain about is local and practical, and much of it is within a practice's control.
Patients are using more care
Use of core services rose across the board in the past year. GP visits reached 85% of Australians, up from 80%. Pharmacy use rose to 66% from 63%, dentist visits to 58% from 55%, and specialist use to 31% from 28%. Fewer Australians used none of the listed services.
Demand for general practice is not the problem. Australians are engaging with healthcare at the highest rate in the survey's five-year trend. The report's commercial question is whether practices convert that engagement into loyalty, recommendations, and continuity, or let it dissipate through friction.
The bulk billing rebound
The standout shift in this year's numbers is bulk billing. 68% of patients were bulk billed at their last GP visit, up from 58% the year before. The value-for-money score for GP care rose to 7.7 out of 10, and the share of patients asking practitioners to offer better value for money fell sharply, from 53% to 27%.
Cost has not disappeared as an issue. It has changed shape. Dental use sits at 54% among lower-income Australians against 64% among higher-income Australians, and cost remains the main reason people skip dental, specialist, mental health and allied health care. But the report is clear that patients judge value, not price alone. Their requests focus on transparency: 'advertise fees before I book', 'explain the breakdown of costs better', and clarity on what the consultation fee includes, such as follow-up calls or discussion of results. Where fees cannot fall, perceived value can still rise if providers explain the purpose of care, the reasoning behind recommendations and what happens next.
Waiting lists and the care that never happens
Waiting lists remain the most stubborn quality issue in the survey. 45% of Australians named shorter waiting lists as the improvement they most want, barely moved from 46% last year.
Behind that sits a larger number. Almost half of Australians say they should have visited at least one type of health practitioner in the past year but didn't. Dentists are the most missed service at 21%, followed by GPs at 17% and specialists at 11%.
Reasons differ by service, and the differences are worth attention. Cost is the main barrier for dental care (59%), mental health care (55%), allied health (55%) and specialist care (55%). GP care is delayed for different reasons: 36% of those who missed a GP visit were managing the issue themselves, and 23% had not had time or had put it off. In other words, patients are self-triaging at the system's front line. The report's framing is right: delayed care is not a lack of demand; it is demand that has stalled. Unmet need is highest among younger adults, lower-income households, NDIS participants and LGBTQI+ Australians.
Mental health is no longer peripheral
Among people who used a psychologist or psychiatrist in the past year, 36% ranked that practitioner as the most important to their or their family's overall health, behind only GPs at 76% among GP users. Mental health care is now central to how a meaningful share of patients define their healthcare.
Access tells the harder story. Psychologists and psychiatrists score lowest of all settings on ease of access at 6.4 out of 10, down from 6.9 last year. Of those who needed support, 47% received help, while 37% didn't seek it at all. This is as much a friction and navigation problem as a workforce problem, and it is the clearest example in the report of the earlier-action challenge: people who recognise they need care but don't act on it.
What patients ask for
The report distils patient responses into five practical levers: simplify the care journey, make value easier to see, communicate in ways patients understand, prompt earlier action and tailor care to different patient needs.
None of it is exotic. Patients asked for online booking with visible appointment times, appointments outside business hours, reminders and follow-up calls after tests. They asked not to have to attend and pay 'just for my doctor to tell my results for a blood test' when the result could be emailed. They asked practitioners to 'just listen', 'look at me and not at the computer screen', explain in plain language and provide written summaries they can absorb later. They also noticed physical signals of care: a friendly greeting at reception, cleanliness, and honest advice about the wait time.
The consistent thread is that patients judge quality across the whole episode of care, not just the consultation. Booking, reception, results handling, reminders, rebooking and aftercare now shape how patients score clinical care.
Switching is the visible end of friction
Nearly one in three Australians changed at least one health professional because they were dissatisfied over the past two to three years. 16% switched GPs, and 8% switched dentists, the two most affected settings, though both figures eased slightly from last year.
The report treats switching as the end point of earlier friction rather than a sudden decision: difficulty getting appointments, unclear costs, rushed communication, weak follow-up or a poor sense of value. For practice owners, lapsed patients and recurring friction points are the early indicators worth monitoring, before the switch happens.
Reading this as a practice owner
I take three things from this report.
First, the consultation experience is now part of the product. Patients rate the whole episode, and the strongest-rated settings in the survey, allied health, optometry and pharmacy, win on attentiveness, clarity and low friction rather than clinical complexity.
Second, affordability is now as much a communication challenge as a billing one. The bulk billing rebound has softened price pressure, but patients still want to know what they are paying, what it includes and what happens next before they book.
Third, retention is earned between visits. Recalls, reminders, results communication and follow-up after missed appointments are the mechanisms that convert rising engagement into continuity. They are also among the cheapest improvements a practice can make.
The practices best positioned to do this treat patient experience as part of care quality and business performance, because that is now how patients treat it.
Where Humphrey fits
Medius Global built Humphrey for the practice side of questions like these. Humphrey is a free AI research advisor on the business of Australian general practice: billing and compliance, workforce arrangements, retention economics, premises, regulation and practice transactions. He answers from a curated research base on Australian primary care, cites his sources, and says so when the archive does not cover a question. He does not do medicine.
If this report raises questions about how your practice handles recalls, fee communication or patient retention, you can put them to him at humphrey.fyi. No login is required.