How many Australians use telehealth
22.5% of Australians aged 15 and over had at least one telehealth consultation for their own health in 2024-25, down from 23.6% in 2023-24 and a pandemic peak of 30.8% in 2021-22.
Source: ABS Patient Experiences, 2024-25
18.5% of Australians aged 15 and over had a telehealth consultation with a GP in the last 12 months.
Source: ABS Patient Experiences, 2024-25
4.0% of Australians aged 15 and over had a telehealth consultation with a medical specialist in the last 12 months.
Source: ABS Patient Experiences, 2024-25
Access and waiting times
5.0 hours median time from booking to consultation for a bulk-billed NewDoc telehealth appointment (April 2026 sample), with 52.2% of patients seen within 4 hours.
32 minutes national pooled median emergency department wait-to-be-seen across the public and private hospitals NewDoc tracks, from 3,790 hospital snapshots in May 2026; state medians ranged from 12 minutes (VIC) to 103 minutes (WA).
What Australians use online GPs for
20.1% of NewDoc online GP presentations were respiratory and ENT complaints (colds, flu, viral illness, COVID), the largest single category in April 2026.
12.1% were mental-health presentations, the second-largest category, ahead of musculoskeletal (8.3%) and women's health (8.2%).
0.7% of online GP presentations carried red-flag features that would be triaged to an emergency department in person (ATS 1-2 equivalent), consistent with telehealth serving routine GP-level care.
What telehealth costs
$0 out of pocket for a bulk-billed telehealth consultation for eligible Medicare cardholders; a private fee applies without Medicare eligibility. Advertised prices at paid Australian online-doctor services are tracked quarterly in the Australian Telehealth Price Index.
Methodology and reuse
National figures are quoted from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Patient Experiences survey (2024-25 reference period) and were verified against the live ABS release on 2026-06-11. NewDoc first-party figures link to the published report each comes from; their methodologies, sample windows, and limitations are documented on those pages. No statistic on this page is published here for the first time.
Journalists, researchers, and health services are welcome to reuse these figures with attribution to the original source named on each statistic, and a link to this page is appreciated when the compilation itself is useful.
Cite this page: NewDoc (2026). Australian Telehealth Statistics. Available at https://www.newdoc.com.au/research/australian-telehealth-statistics. Updated as new data is published; figures last reviewed 2026-06-11.
About NewDoc
NewDoc is an Australian bulk-billed telehealth GP service. All consulting doctors are FRACGP-qualified Fellows of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. NewDoc consultations are bulk-billed for eligible Medicare cardholders, including prescriptions, medical certificates, and specialist referrals issued during the consult.
Published 2026-06-11. Last reviewed 2026-06-11.