But what is the intention of Clean Bill? Why are we here? What are we doing today for the healthcare consumer? And how does that benefit practices in the long run?

Yeah, well, so, I mean, I'm really glad you asked that, Zach, because that's something that I think sometimes gets lost in these headline reports that we release because people tend to focus just on the data and don't necessarily focus on anything that's behind it, our methodology, the directory that we've built.

To me, the directory is the heart of it.

It's the reason we started it.

We started Clean Bill, or I started Clean Bill at the end of 2022, start of 2023.

And the reason I did was because I wanted to make healthcare as accessible as possible.

And to my mind, making healthcare really accessible was about increasing the amount of information that both clinics and patients had access to so that they could connect with each other.

It obviously did spread far and wide, which is good.

And you're usually the arbiter of that sadness.

Well, I work in an editorial magazine role, but I believe this also extends to books.

Depending on the amount of overflow text you produce is that we have blocked out a publication.

We have a certain amount of space.

So if we have asked you to produce 5,000 words and you've produced seven, we have to ship the entire pagination, creating more space, bumping other aspects of things.

or we have to reduce visual, which we can't really do, right? And the same idea, budgetarily you've impacted the publication because you have to increase page count, which goes to the printer, which means ordering paper, which means all sorts of things like that.

So if you don't hit your text deadline, there's a lot of factors of problem solving that have to be implemented

Well, with your muse rights to check, your muse can make the decision.

So before we get to some specific areas, based on my listener Steve's email, I don't know to what extent you know the specific information about the ongoing commitment, but once a clinic says, righto, we'll go fully bulk build and they then get the extra incentive, what checks are there?

So fully bulk billing traditionally means just that, that they will bulk bill every single patient who comes in the door for every service that they provide.

Now, some procedures are not included in that, but if you're coming in for a consultation, it's included.

But Luke, I think you touched on something really good there with Steve's email as well, is that it can be really complex understanding all of these terms and understanding how the individual clinics operate.

are applying them and that's what we really try to cut through with clean bills so for example we've just recently added filters to the website so you can say okay i'm looking for a bulk billing clinic just for a concession adult or a clinic that specifically bulk bills non-concession adults specifically to answer those questions for people so that they're not going to websites and then only finding out later on that they're not part of a group that will be bulk billed

What areas in particular stand out where there have been significant increases say in New South Wales or Queensland? Do you know offhand James?

Yeah, absolutely.

So in New South Wales, particularly in Sydney, we're seeing a kind of entrenchment of the trends that you and I have spoken about for a couple of years now, Luke, which is that you've got these electorates in Western Sydney.

'Cause I wasn't involved initially.

Or perhaps, like, defining the differences between what would be the genre of fantasy and the genre of sword and sorcery, where where there's magic, there's wizards, there are creatures and there are monsters, but we're losing some of the more magical side of things.

Yeah.

And we drop, uh, like hints as we're going along.

For instance, the characters that we're talking about are the Vann, and in the world of Sword and Sorcery, we live in a world of sort of an Iron Age where people are using metal implements, but they've rejected, and it's discussed that they've rejected the foremost technologies available to them and have moved back out into the wilderness.

And so we just, if they're eating it, they know that it's good.

When it comes to that policy, what, what have you found? What have been the key changes to bulk billing around the country?

Yeah, so this is a bit of a complex change, but to put it simply, GPs are now receiving more money for becoming fully bulk billing practices.

So practices where no matter who you are, when you walk in the door, if you are bulk billed by that GP clinic, they receive more money from the government for seeing you than they did previously.

And if they bulk bill every single patient who walks in the door, so if they become 100% bulk billing, they receive an additional amount on top of that, an, an additional incentive.

And so what this report looks at is what have been the effects on bulk billing numbers across the country, how many clinics have started bulk billing as a result of these changes, and what have been the effects on out-of-pocket costs at the clinics that haven't started bulk billing, because it's by no means universally been adopted that every single GP clinics become fully bulk billing as a result of these changes.

And what we've found is that the trends that we've seen in bulk billing that I think everyone would be familiar with when trying to find a bulk billing doctor over the past couple of years, where we've seen a decline in bulk billing across the country, that's been completely reversed.

Uh, in fact, over the last year, the percentage of bulk billing clinics, so the percentage of clinics that are fully bulk billing when you go in the door, that's almost doubled to just above 40%, which means that four in 10 GP clinics across the country are now fully bulk billing for every person who walks in the door.

I am curious to know, aside from the government's incentives here, would there be any other reason that a GP would switch and become a fully bulk billing practice?