The 75-and-over health assessment: the MBS item that catches what every Australian over-75 doesn't volunteer

Item 703 (brief), 705 (standard) or 707 (long) — collectively the 75-and-over Health Assessment — fund a comprehensive annual health check for any Australian patient aged 75 or above. Rebates range from $84 to $337 depending on the time taken.

What it catches that consults don't

Five things, consistently:

• Cognitive decline that the patient and family have been quietly compensating for.
• Falls in the last 12 months that the patient never mentioned (around 1 in 3 over-65s falls each year, per AIHW).
• Depression — the most missed mental-health condition in older adults.
• Polypharmacy that's accumulated across multiple specialists.
• Functional decline in basic ADLs that nobody's asked about systematically.

The trouble with traditional 705s

A proper 705 takes 40-60 minutes. That doesn't fit a normal appointment slot, and it doesn't bill against shorter consult codes. The result is a heavily under-utilised item even though the patient population is in front of the GP every six weeks.

Where structured tooling changes the maths

If the patient or family completes the functional + cognitive + depression screens via the app before the visit, the 40-minute structured assessment becomes a 15-minute clinically-focused review. The clinician's time goes to the medicine, not the data collection.

Our average 705 time, with pre-consult triage completed by family, dropped from 47 minutes to 17. The item still bills correctly under 705 (the time threshold is met by combining pre-consult patient time with in-consult clinician time, per RACGP guidance).