A patient calls your reception desk to book. Their GP wrote the referral five months ago. Is it still valid? Can you bill the consultation? Does the patient need to go back to the GP for a new letter first?

This question comes up at the front desk more often than most practices would like, and getting it wrong is expensive. A consultation booked against an expired referral can mean the patient pays more, the rebate is reduced, or the appointment has to be rescheduled while a new referral is chased. So here is the plain version of how referral validity works in Australia, and why it matters for the practice receiving the referral.

A quick note on how referrals actually reach you. The GP rarely sends anything straight to your system. The referral turns up at your practice as a letter the patient brings in, a fax, an email, or an uploaded document. Your job starts the moment it arrives, and validity is one of the first things your team needs to read off it.

The standard answer: 12 months

A standard referral from a GP to a specialist lasts 12 months. That is the default under Medicare unless the GP writes a different period on the referral.

But here is the part that trips people up. The 12 months does not start from the date the GP wrote the letter. It starts from the date the patient first sees the specialist.

That distinction matters enormously when wait times are long. If a GP writes a referral in January and the patient cannot get an appointment until May, the referral has not “used up” four months. The clock starts in May, at the first appointment, and runs for 12 months from there. So a referral that looks old on paper is very often still perfectly valid.

When a GP sets a different period

The 12-month default is just that, a default. A GP can write a referral for a shorter or longer period depending on the patient’s situation.

Shorter referrals. A GP might specify three months or six months, often when they want to review the patient again soon or when the referral is for a single, time-limited issue.

Indefinite referrals. For patients with chronic, ongoing conditions that need long-term specialist care, a GP can write an indefinite referral with no end date. Think of someone managing a long-term cardiac condition, inflammatory bowel disease, or a chronic skin condition. Rather than sending the patient back for a fresh letter every year, the GP can write the referral as ongoing. The specific wording sits with the GP and the clinical situation.

So when your reception staff look at a referral, the period written on it overrides the 12-month assumption. Always read what the GP actually specified.

Specialist-to-specialist referrals are different

Here is a rule that catches a lot of practices out. If a specialist refers a patient to another specialist, that referral is usually valid for three months, not 12.

This matters if your practice receives onward referrals from other specialists rather than directly from GPs. A cardiologist referring to an electrophysiologist, or a physician referring to a surgeon, is working to a three-month window unless stated otherwise. If your front desk treats every referral as a 12-month referral, you will eventually book a patient against a specialist referral that lapsed two months ago.

Why this matters for the receiving practice

For the practice on the receiving end, referral validity is not paperwork trivia. It is directly tied to whether you get paid and whether the patient has a smooth experience.

An expired referral is a billing problem. If the referral has lapsed, the consultation may not attract the specialist rebate the patient expected. That becomes an awkward conversation at the desk, or a bill the patient was not prepared for.

It bounces the patient back to the GP. When a referral expires, the patient often has to return to their GP for a new one before they can be seen. That is an extra appointment, an extra delay, and another point where the patient can simply give up. A referral that lapses is a quiet contributor to referral leakage, the gap between referrals received and appointments actually booked.

It is avoidable with basic tracking. Most of these problems come down to one thing: nobody recorded when the referral was written, what period the GP specified, or when the patient first attended. If that information lives in a paper folder or a single line in a spreadsheet, it is easy to miss.

A worked example

Say a referral reaches your practice in February, dated by the GP that month with no special period. Your next available appointment is in June, so the patient is first seen in June.

That referral is valid until June the following year, a full 12 months from the first visit. Even though the letter is dated four months before the first appointment, none of that time counts against the patient. Plenty of practices wrongly turn these patients away or send them back to the GP, creating delay and frustration for a referral that was never going to expire.

Now flip it. A referral comes in from a cardiologist, not a GP, dated back in January. The patient calls to book in May. That specialist-to-specialist referral was only valid for three months and has lapsed. This one genuinely does need a fresh referral. Knowing the difference is the whole game.

How to stop referral expiry causing problems

A few simple habits remove almost all of the risk.

Record the key dates on every referral. Capture the date the referral was written, the period the GP specified, and the date of the patient’s first attendance. Those three pieces of information answer the validity question instantly.

Flag the difference between GP and specialist referrals. Tag where the referral came from so your team applies the right window, 12 months for GP referrals and three months for specialist-to-specialist ones.

Watch for upcoming expiries. For patients in ongoing care, a referral nearing its end date is a prompt to ask the GP for a renewal before the next appointment, not after.

This is exactly the kind of thing a referral management system is built to handle. Every referral logged with its dates, its source, and its status, so the answer to “is this still valid?” is never a guess at the front desk.

The bottom line

Most GP referrals in Australia last 12 months, counted from the patient’s first specialist visit rather than the date the letter was written. GPs can set shorter periods or write indefinite referrals for chronic conditions, and specialist-to-specialist referrals usually run for just three months.

For the receiving practice, the cost of getting this wrong is real: lost rebates, frustrated patients, and referrals that quietly lapse and never convert. The fix is not complicated. Record the dates, track the source, and watch the expiries. If you want to see how that looks in practice, start a free trial or read more about what happens after a GP hits send.

How Long Does a GP Referral Last in Australia?