A new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that patients in the North Coast Primary Health Network area incurred out of pocket costs during 2016/17 of $124.

The national median is $142.

For patients living in Port Macquarie that cost rose to $130 but drop to $125 for patients living in the Kempsey/Nambucca area. Patients living in the Clarence Valley paid $116.

The North Coast Primary Health Network covers an area from the Camden Haven to north of Byron Bay.

But patients living in some primary health networks around Austraila paid almost double that of others, said AIHW spokesperson Michael Frost, 

"The median out-of-pocket cost per patient during 2016-17 ranged from $104 in Western Queensland to $206 in Northern Sydney," he said.

The report also highlights variation in how much patients pay out-of-pocket per service. 

More than 7 in 10 people who had specialist consultations had out-of-pocket costs, and for these people the median ‘gap’ per specialist visit was $64. For North Coast residents it was $55.

The report shows that nationally in 2016/17, half of patients (10.9 million patients) paid something from their own pockets toward their services. The remaining half had the full cost for all of their non-hospital Medicare services covered by the government.

This is different from the usually reported bulk-billing rate for GP services that were completely paid for by the government. 

In 2016–17, 86% of GP services were bulk-billed while 66% of patients had all of their GP services bulk-billed.

The proportion of patients with out-of-pocket costs for non-hospital Medicare services varied considerably across Australia’s 31 Primary Health Network areas, from 31% of patients paying something out-of-pocket in the Northern Territory PHN, up to 69% in the Australian Capital Territory PHN.

The report also highlighted how many Australians rate their health positively.

According to the data, residents in the local primary health network have been increasingly positive about their health over the last three years.

The figures show that in 2014/15, the percentage of adults who reported excellent, very good or good health was 77.2 per cent. The national figure was 85.9%

In 2015/16, the national figure was 87 per cent while the North Coast figure was 82 per cent.

However, by 2016/17, North Coast rated their health at 82 per cent compared with 85.3 per cent at the national level.