What is Medicare? Understanding the basics.

Medicare can feel complicated, particularly when you start navigating item descriptors, scheduled fees, benefit rates, and the rules around claiming. But understanding the fundamentals makes it much easier to see how the different pieces fit together.

Welcome to this first episode of Medicare Explained — a new HealthCert Education podcast series for GPs. In the first episode, skin cancer doctor A/Prof Tony Dicker and practice operations expert Matt Woollard go back to basics, looking at what Medicare actually is, how it operates as a government-funded insurance system, and the distinction between a scheduled fee, a Medicare benefit, and the fee charged by a practitioner.

They also unpack the role of MBS item descriptors and why providing a service is not, by itself, enough to claim a Medicare benefit. The service must meet the requirements of the relevant descriptor, with clinical notes providing an important record of what was done.

The discussion also explores explanatory notes, benefit rates, and the distinction between patient-initiated consultations and health screening services, including how this applies to skin cancer assessment in primary care.

This episode sets the groundwork for the rest of the series, which will progressively explore consultations, investigation items, procedures, billing, and the medico-legal considerations GPs need to understand when working within the Medicare system.

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Explore more educational content in Skin Cancer Medicine.

Podcast playlist

Listen to all episodes in the Medicare Explained series.

This episode is also available on the HealthCert Education YouTube channel.

H O S T S

A/Prof Tony Dicker

Associate Professor (Skin Cancer) & Course Coordinator MMed (Skin Cancer), The University of Queensland

Tony Dicker has practised full-time Skin Cancer Medicine in Melbourne since 2004, and previously practised in Brisbane. He obtained his PhD from The University of Queensland in molecular biology of skin cancer with Professor Ian Frazer's group at Princess Alexandra Hospital. He then spent three years as a dermatology registrar at the Royal Brisbane and Princess Alexandra Hospitals.

Matt Woollard

Healthcare Entrepreneur & Business Development Consultant

Born and educated in Adelaide, Matt Woollard is a seasoned healthcare entrepreneur with over two decades of experience building, scaling, and transforming healthcare businesses across Australia.

Matt began his healthcare career in 2000 as the second employee of Skin Alert Skin Cancer Clinics, where he worked alongside founder Paul Elmslie to grow the business from the ground up to a network of 14 clinics nationwide over seven years. As Chief Executive Officer of National Skin Cancer Centres, established in 2016, Matt led the business through a period of significant expansion before its successful acquisition by Sonic Clinic Services.

With a deep knowledge of skin cancer medicine, Medicare frameworks, and the operational realities of primary care, Matt's core expertise lies in business development, identifying, structuring, and growing healthcare assets in an increasingly complex and competitive landscape. Today, Matt consults across the broader healthcare sector, partnering with large corporates and private equity firms to develop and de-risk healthcare assets. He remains active in skin cancer medicine and brings the same sharp commercial lens to emerging opportunities in women's and mental health.

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