According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 98% of Australians report having a usual GP or a usual place of care, a relationship most people hold onto for years, not months. Almost two thirds of people with a usual GP have been seeing that same GP for five years or more, rising to 68% among people aged 65 and over.
It’s a striking level of consistency for a health system that, in plenty of other respects, gets described as strained. Australians, it turns out, overwhelmingly want a regular doctor, and mostly manage to keep one.
The same ABS research found that patients rate their experience with a usual GP highly on the measures that continuity is supposed to deliver. Over four in five people (85%) said their usual GP or others at their usual place of care were always or usually aware of their health care history. A similar share, 88%, said they were always or usually involved in decisions about their own care.
These aren’t small details. A GP who already knows a patient’s history doesn’t need that history rebuilt from scratch at every visit, and a patient who feels genuinely involved in decisions about their own care tends to engage differently with the advice they’re given. Both are widely recognised benefits of continuity in general practice, and the data suggests most patients who have a usual GP are actually experiencing them.
Having a usual GP and actually being able to see them are two different things. The more recent ABS Patient Experience data tracks a separate measure: the proportion of people who could always see their preferred GP when they needed to. In 2024–25, that figure was 67.2%, up from 66.4% the year before, and 63.7% the year before that.
The trend is heading in the right direction, but the gap is still substantial. Even with recent improvement, roughly one in three Australians with a preferred GP couldn’t always get in to see that specific doctor when they needed care, even though the relationship itself, the years of history, the familiarity, the trust, was already there.
Put side by side, these figures describe a specific and fairly relatable tension: a health system where the relationship between patient and doctor is, for the vast majority of people, genuinely long-standing and valued, but where actually accessing that specific relationship on any given occasion isn’t guaranteed. Patients aren’t struggling to find a GP in some abstract sense. Many of them already have one they trust and have seen for years. The harder part is reliably getting in front of that particular person when it matters.
It’s a reminder that continuity of care in Australia isn’t primarily a problem of relationships not forming. The relationships are there, and by the numbers, they’re valued. The remaining gap is more about access to a specific, already-established connection, at the moments patients actually need it.
The infrastructure layer that turns GP clinics from passive waiters into active carers.
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