Yes. In Australia, you can pick up the phone, book a hearing assessment, and sit down with an audiologist without a referral from anyone. No letter from your GP, no waiting list for a specialist to slot you in, no permission slip. You decide your hearing is worth checking, and you book it.
That catches a lot of people off guard. The healthcare habit most of us grew up with runs everything through the GP. Sore knee, see the GP, get sent to the physio. Chest pain, see the GP, get sent for a scan. Hearing starts to slip, and people assume the same queue applies. It doesn’t. Audiology is one of the few corners of health where the front door is open, and you walk straight to the person trained to help.
So what does a referral actually change? Money, in some cases. A GP referral can unlock a Medicare rebate on certain diagnostic audiology items, and that referral has to be valid for each visit you want to claim against. The rebate can be up to $100 for a child test and up to $50 for an adult.
The Hearing Services Program sits on a separate track. This is the government scheme that subsidises hearing assessments and devices for pensioners, veterans, and a few other groups. It runs under the Department of Health, outside Medicare, and you don’t need a GP referral to access it. Eligibility turns on what card you hold rather than who sends you: a Pensioner Concession Card, a DVA Gold Card, a DVA White Card issued for hearing conditions, plus a handful of other categories, for Australians 21 and over. New clients do need a medical certificate as part of the application, which is the one spot where a doctor enters the picture. Children under 26 can often access support through the program’s Community Service Obligations arm, with Hearing Australia as the funded provider for kids.
Children don’t need a referral either. You can book a child straight in with a private paediatric audiologist. At The Audiology Place, we test from six months of age, and many of the children we see arrive before an ENT appointment, before an ADHD assessment, before anyone has worked out whether the problem is hearing, attention, or both. Parents in the Northern Beaches book those tests themselves; no GP referral is required.
When should a doctor come first? Self-referral is the right move for a hearing check, ringing ears, muffled conversations, or a child who isn’t responding the way you’d expect. A few situations call for a doctor straight away. Sudden hearing loss in one ear is a medical emergency, and the window for treatment is roughly 72 hours, so see a GP or head to an emergency department and push for an urgent ENT review rather than booking a routine hearing test for next week. Ear pain, discharge, or a fever points to infection a GP should look at. Ongoing dizziness or vertigo may need a medical workup. If you do need to see an ENT surgeon, that one does require a GP referral, with the wait that usually comes attached.
The Audiology Place has no ownership ties to any hearing aid maker, no quotas, no commissions riding on what you buy. A hearing test here takes at least 60 minutes, and the recommendation depends on what your ears need, which sometimes means no device at all. Self-referral only works in your favour if the place you refer yourself to has nothing to sell you.
So yes, you can self-refer. It’s a phone call to (02) 9315 8327 or a few clicks at theaudiologyplace.com.au. Where you point that phone call is the decision that matters.
