Your Visa Is Ready. Is Your Health?

What newcomers should know about healthcare in Australia

Natchaya Anurutnetsiri (s4107767)

24 October 2026

A narrowed ureter, the tube between my kidney and bladder, makes my kidney swell. It is a long-term condition, and I see a GP one to three times a month. When my doctor planned a CT scan for me, I learned how healthcare works in Australia. Before I could have the scan, I had to:

  1. See a GP to get a blood test
  2. Have the blood test, then wait about a week for the result
  3. Go back to the GP to go through the result
  4. Only then, book the CT scan

In Thailand, my blood test result would take one or two hours, and if the doctor wanted more tests, I could often have them the same day.

Here, almost every step starts at the GP. If you don’t know that before you arrive, it can cost you a lot of time. So I wanted to know: was this just my experience, or do other people face the same steps?

1. Almost 2.9 million people live in Australia on a temporary visa

Source: Department of Home Affairs (2026), BP0019 Number of temporary visa holders in Australia at 2026-08-31. Figures as at 30 June each year; the last point is 31 August 2026, so part of its rise may be seasonal.

Switch to Thai citizens only and the picture is closer to mine: about 1 in 3 Thai temporary visa holders is a student.

I am not the only newcomer. If you are one of these people, the first thing to know is that there is no shortcut: almost everything goes through the GP first. So how easy is it to see a GP?

The next four charts are about everyone in Australia, not only newcomers. Newcomers use the same system, often without knowing how it works.

2. Since 2022–23, getting a GP appointment has been as hard as getting a specialist one

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2025), Patient experiences, 2024–25 financial year, Tables 4, 6.2 and 10. Shaded bands show the 95% margin of error.

The same survey shows how much depends on that first appointment. In 2024–25, 47% of people who needed a GP for urgent care waited 24 hours or more, and 84.8% of people who saw a specialist had a referral first.

In my case, booking a specialist took about half a year. If most people wait like this a few times a year, what about people with a long-term health condition, such as a chronic illness, who have to go back to the GP and the specialist again and again?

3. With a long-term condition, every step is harder

Each row is one step of care, in the order of the care journey. Try How many times as likely: the smallest numbers hide the biggest gaps.
● Has a long-term condition   ● No long-term condition   ├┤ 95% margin of error

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2025), Patient experiences, 2024–25 financial year, Tables 6.2, 9.2, 12.2 and 18.2. Each row is the % of people who needed that type of care. Ratios built from small percentages (medicine, hospital) are less certain than the others. *Waited longer than they felt was acceptable. Notes in brown are my own experience, not survey data.

If care for the body already has this many steps, what about mental health care, which sits even deeper in the system?

4. Almost 4 in 10 people who needed a psychologist delayed or missed it

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2025), Patient experiences, 2024–25 financial year, Tables 27.3 and 27.4. Each square is 1 in 100 people who needed to see that professional (rounded). “Cost was a reason” may include other reasons too. Note in brown is my own experience, not survey data.

Try the age buttons. People aged 25-34 and 35-44 had the highest rates: 45 and 44 in 100 who needed a psychologist delayed or missed it (the two are within each other’s margin of error). These are the ages of many international students and young workers.

Far from home, without family nearby, this matters even more. And when the GP is fully booked or closed for the night, the emergency department is what is left.

5. When my GP was closed, the ED was the only door left

Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2026), MyHospitals: Emergency department care (sheets “Time in ED” and “Patients seen on time”). Victoria, all reporting public hospitals. Times are for patients arriving at any hour; 6 pm is only an example to turn them into clock times. White marks show 2011-12, the first year in the data. Note in brown is my own experience, not survey data.

In 15 of 40 Victorian public hospitals, half of ED patients stayed 4 hours or more in 2024-25. To be fair, patients are now being seen sooner: 69% of urgent patients were seen on time in 2024-25, up from 58% in 2021-22. The long part is what happens after that. For patients admitted to a ward, the time fell to 3h 54m in 2016-17 and has since climbed back to the 2011-12 level.

If I could go back, this is what I would want to learn about healthcare in Australia before I moved here.

For me, almost everything here starts at the GP. The data shows I am not alone: people with a long-term condition, and people who need mental health care, meet the most barriers. If you don’t know how the system works before you arrive, it can be hard.

If you are planning to live in Australia for a long time:

  1. Learn the system before you come. Most care starts with a GP, and you usually need a booking. Find a GP near where you will live in your first week, before you get sick.
  2. Know what your cover pays for. Thailand does not have a reciprocal health care agreement with Australia, so Thai students are not covered by Medicare (Department of Health, Victoria, 2026). Student visa holders must have Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC). It pays 85% of the Medicare fee for a GP visit, and prescription medicines only up to $50 per item and $500 a year on a single policy, so you may still pay a gap (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, 2026).
  3. Bring your medical history. Ask your doctor at home for a summary of your condition, test results and medicines, so your new GP can add it to your record. It may save you some steps.
  4. Bring your medicines the right way. Check the rules for travelling with medicines before you fly (Therapeutic Goods Administration, n.d.).
  5. Find your nearest emergency department before you need it. You can look up any public hospital on AIHW MyHospitals.

Every country’s health system works differently, and your health affects everything else you came here to do. Get ready before you arrive.

References

Data sources for the charts: Department of Home Affairs, ABS and AIHW. Other references support the text only.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Patient experiences, 2024–25 financial year. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/health-services/patient-experiences/latest-release

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2026). MyHospitals: Emergency department care (Data extract, version 2026081901, data as of 19 August 2026) [Data set]. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-data/myhospitals/content/about-the-data

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. (2026). Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC): Fact sheet. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-08/overseas-student-health-cover-oshc-fact-sheet.pdf

Department of Health, Victoria. (2026, July 23). Reciprocal healthcare agreements. https://health.vic.gov.au/patient-fees-charges/reciprocal-healthcare-agreements

Department of Home Affairs. (2026). BP0019 Number of temporary visa holders in Australia at 2026-08-31 [Data set]. data.gov.au. https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/temporary-entrants-visa-holders

R Core Team. (2025). R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/

Sievert, C. (2020). Interactive web-based data visualization with R, plotly, and shiny. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://plotly-r.com

Therapeutic Goods Administration. (n.d.). Travelling with medicines and medical devices. Retrieved October 24, 2026, from https://www.tga.gov.au/products/travelling-medicines-and-medical-devices

Wickham, H., Averick, M., Bryan, J., Chang, W., McGowan, L. D., François, R., Grolemund, G., Hayes, A., Henry, L., Hester, J., Kuhn, M., Pedersen, T. L., Miller, E., Bache, S. M., Müller, K., Ooms, J., Robinson, D., Seidel, D. P., Spinu, V., … Yutani, H. (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(43), 1686. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

Wickham, H., & Bryan, J. (2025). readxl: Read Excel files [R package]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=readxl