You trained for eleven years to look after patients, not chase Medicare line items. If you're stepping into private practice, your billing is suddenly your own problem — and getting it wrong costs you real money.
This page is written by a fellow anaesthetist who built a billing service from the inside out.
Billing is the part of private practice nobody teaches you in training.
You finish your fellowship knowing how to manage a difficult airway in front of a registrar, but the first time you bill an episode of anaesthesia, you're on your own with the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), the Relative Value Guide, modifier items, health-fund Known Gap and No Gap arrangements, and a clock that started ticking the moment you signed your first credentialing agreement.
Most new anaesthetists try to learn it themselves. Some get a partner or family member to "help with the admin". A few hand it to the hospital. After six to twelve months, almost all of them either start losing money to small errors they can't see, or they discover their cheap admin solution is costing them several hours per week of clinical time. That's the moment they call us.
The short version: if you're moving into private practice for the first time, outsourcing your billing to a specialist anaesthetic biller is almost always cheaper, faster, and lower-risk than doing it yourself or asking a non-specialist to do it. Our fee is 4.5% all-inclusive. The maths usually works out in your favour from your second list onwards. The calculator below will tell you your number.
Outsourcing your billing means a specialist team handles the entire revenue cycle for your anaesthetic services, from the moment a list finishes to the moment the money lands in your account. For a typical new anaesthetist, that includes:
It's the same work an in-house billing manager would do, without the salary, the superannuation, the desk, the leave, the training, or the key-person risk of having one person hold all your billing knowledge.
Two are obvious from day one. Three are quiet wins you'll never directly see.
Our first-pass claim acceptance rate is 99%. Claims submitted correctly the first time are paid in days, not months. Fewer rejections also means fewer rework cycles and far fewer awkward conversations with patients about unexpected invoices.
Most anaesthetists doing their own billing spend three to six hours per week on it. At a conservative private-practice hourly value, that's the most expensive admin work you'll ever do.
Time units, age modifiers, physical status modifiers, after-hours modifiers and post-operative pain items get missed when a non-specialist runs your billing. Specialist coding routinely uncovers items the practitioner didn't know they could bill.
Medicare audits aren't common, but they're serious when they happen. Specialist billers maintain audit-ready records by default. If you ever get a please-explain, we can produce the documentation in hours, not weeks.
One list per week, full-time lists across three hospitals, or a group practice — the same workflow scales without you hiring, training, or replacing admin staff. You also avoid carrying the cost of an in-house biller through quiet periods.
Move the sliders to match your practice. The numbers update instantly — no email required. A directional estimate to help you have a useful conversation, not a fee quote.
How this works: the calculator assumes 46 working weeks per year and that outsourcing recovers the hours you currently spend on billing. It values that time at the clinical-hour rate you set. It does not include the typical revenue uplift from better item capture and lower rejection rates — those wins are real but vary practice-by-practice and we won't promise a number we can't stand behind. Treat the output as a directional estimate, not a guarantee.
The most common question new anaesthetists ask is "how does this actually compare to just doing it myself?" Here's the honest breakdown.
No setup fees. No exit fees. No fixed-term contracts. Free migration from your existing biller. The decision lives with you on every list.
We're not in the business of badmouthing DIY billing — plenty of anaesthetists run their own books capably. But there's a recurring pattern of avoidable losses when new private anaesthetists first come to us.
Age modifiers, physical status modifiers, after-hours emergency modifiers — easy to forget on a busy list. Each one is small. Across a year they add up.
The RVG rewards accurate time accounting. Rounding habits that worked in residency cost you money in private practice.
Services Australia explicitly rejects anaesthesia claims where items are submitted out of order. Specialist software handles this; generic billing software often doesn't.
Patient invoices over 60 days old are progressively harder to collect. Most DIY anaesthetists don't have a follow-up cadence that catches them in time.
Known Gap vs No Gap vs no agreement is a workflow decision with real revenue implications. Many default to whichever option the first health fund offered them, rather than choosing.
The first year of private practice is the riskiest from a Medicare compliance perspective, because your documentation habits are still forming.
For most new anaesthetists the financial argument for outsourcing is straightforward once you put numbers next to it. Here's what we typically see for an anaesthetist working four private lists per week at a moderate average billing value.
Plug your own numbers into the calculator above if those don't match your practice. The point isn't the exact figure — it's that the maths almost always works for a new anaesthetist with even modest list volumes, because the 4.5% fee is small relative to the time and accuracy cost of doing it yourself.
For pricing details across different practice sizes, see our full anaesthetic billing pricing page. If you're stepping into private practice for the first time, our New Anaesthetist Referral Program is built for you specifically.
I'm a specialist anaesthetist in private practice. I founded Fast Tracking in 2013 because the billing services available to my colleagues at the time were either generic medical billers who didn't understand the Relative Value Guide, or expensive boutiques aimed at established practices. New and mid-career anaesthetists needed a service that spoke their language, used specialist coders, and didn't lock them into long contracts.
"Your administration reflects you. The standards your patients see before they meet you are the standards they'll attribute to you."
I still review the systems, the audits and the coding standards personally. Day-to-day operations run on our Account Manager model — every anaesthetist on our books has a dedicated account manager who learns how they practise.
Dr Brad Hindson · Founder, FANZCAFast Tracking has been doing my anaesthetic billing for the last ten years. They are very organised and efficient and get it done without any stress or hassle. They are up to date with technology and are always available. They go out of the way often by doing more than necessary to make patients comfortable.Dr Diwakara Madina FANZCA10 years with Fast Tracking
I've been using Fast Tracking Anaesthetic Billing Services for years and have always found them to be excellent — fast, accurate, and very reliable. Staff are friendly, easy to reach, helpful with queries, and handle client issues with professionalism. Highly recommended.Dr Peter Ching8 years with Fast Tracking
Anaesthetic billing involves sensitive personal and health information, so it's governed by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles — in particular APP 11, which requires us to take reasonable steps to protect the data we hold from misuse, loss and unauthorised access. Note that HIPAA is a US framework and doesn't apply in Australia, despite what some marketing pages claim.
In practice that means:
Fast Tracking charges 4.5% of gross billings, all-inclusive. There are no setup fees, no exit fees, no fixed-term contracts, and migration from your previous biller is free. The fee is tax-deductible as a business expense.
Most anaesthetists are set up and submitting their first claims through Fast Tracking within a week. We handle the handover from your previous provider or in-house workflow so there's no gap in income while you change over.
Yes. Billing service fees are a normal business expense incurred in earning your professional income, so they're generally tax-deductible. Confirm your individual treatment with your accountant.
Anaesthetic billing in Australia is governed by the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, including APP 11 on the security of personal information. Fast Tracking stores data on secure, locally hosted systems with encrypted transmission, restricted access and audit logging. You retain full ownership of and access to your billing data.
Known Gap and No Gap are agreements with private health funds that determine how much (if anything) the patient pays out of pocket. They affect both your billing workflow and patient satisfaction. Fast Tracking assists you with health-fund agreements as part of onboarding and can advise on the trade-offs for your case mix.
Yes. You set your own fee schedule and Known Gap or No Gap participation. Fast Tracking executes claims, follow-up and reconciliation according to your instructions. We'll flag issues and make recommendations, but the fee decisions stay with you.
Common triggers include moving from public to private practice for the first time, increasing list volume, a partner or assistant absorbing more billing admin than they should, repeated MBS coding rejections, unaccounted-for time units on Relative Value Guide items, ageing debtors more than 60 days old, or simply the time cost of doing it yourself being higher than the 4.5% fee.
Yes. Fast Tracking is set up to scale up or down with your list volume. A new anaesthetist working one list per week pays the same percentage fee as a busy full-list anaesthetist, with no minimum invoice value and no fixed monthly retainer.
Send us a message. We'll show you what your billing would look like with Fast Tracking — at no cost, no obligation, and no high-pressure sales process. You'll talk to a real person, not a sales agent.
