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
78% of completed NewDoc consults happened on the day they were booked and 95% within 24 hours; the median time from booking to consult was 4.7 hours (1 July to 29 September 2026, n = 41,790).
Definition: completed or at-billing appointments booked by patients, scheduled in the window (1 July to 29 September 2026). "Same day" means the booking and the consult fall on the same Sydney calendar date.
Different sample and definition from the April 2026 figure below; the two are not a trend.
Source: NewDoc booking data (definition above)
5.0 hours median time from booking to consultation for a bulk billed NewDoc telehealth appointment (April 2026 sample). Correction, 30 September 2026: an earlier version paired this with a 52.2% within-4-hours figure from a separate May 2026 sample.
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; across the states with public live feeds, state medians ranged from 13 minutes (QLD) to 103 minutes (WA).
What Australians use online GPs for
59.7% of NewDoc online GP pre-consults in April 2026 sought clinical care for a health problem; the other 40.3% were continuing-care services, led by prescription renewals (16.9% of all consults) and medical certificates (13.3%).
13.9% of presentations sought care for respiratory and ENT illness (colds, flu, viral illness, COVID), the largest clinical category, ahead of mental health (7.7%) and musculoskeletal problems (7.1%). Clinical categories count only consults seeking care for the problem itself, not certificates or scripts citing it.
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 2026-10-17. NewDoc first-party figures link to the published report each comes from; their methodologies, sample windows, and limitations are documented on those pages. The current access figures come from NewDoc booking data, and their definition is shown with them. 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 2026-10-17.
About NewDoc
NewDoc is an Australian bulk billed telehealth GP service. All consulting doctors are fellowed specialist GPs. 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 2026-10-17. Next scheduled review: November 2026.