What to offer a GP: the structures, the ranges, and what actually moves doctors

By Sam Gillette, Founder of Taro

It's the question practice owners ask most, usually quietly: what do I actually have to put on the table? The answer has three shapes: a percentage of billings, with publicly discussed splits commonly putting the GP's share around 60–70% (public GP salary guides); hourly or sessional rates; or a hybrid that guarantees a minimum against percentage. This guide covers all three, plus the part that decides more moves than money does, because for the employed GP considering your clinic, the question is never just the split. It's whether your situation is better than the one they're already in.

One honest note up front: there is no official rate card for GP offers. The figures below describe common structures discussed openly in public GP salary guides and practice-management resources. Your market position depends on your location, patient demand and the role itself. The offer is one of the three things to settle before searching in how to hire a GP in Australia.

How are GP offers structured in Australia?

Three ways: a percentage of billings, the dominant model for VR GPs in private practice, with the GP's share commonly around 60–70% of billings (public GP salary guides); hourly or sessional rates, common for registrars and part-time arrangements; or a hybrid: a guaranteed minimum against percentage, the structure that wins relocations and clinic changes.

1. Percentage of billings. The dominant model for VR GPs in private practice: the doctor bills, the clinic takes a service fee, the GP keeps the remainder. Publicly discussed splits commonly put the GP's share around 60–70% of billings, with the clinic's service fee covering rooms, staff, systems and administration (public GP salary guides: Cubiko, Transition Medical). Where a GP lands inside that band tracks their patient load, their billing style, and how badly the clinic needs them.

2. Hourly or sessional rates. Common for registrars, part-time arrangements and some non-VR roles: predictable for both sides, less upside for a busy doctor. Often paired with a review date to move to percentage once patient load builds.

3. Hybrid: guaranteed minimum against percentage. The structure that wins relocations and clinic changes: a guaranteed hourly or weekly floor for the first three to six months (while the doctor's book fills), converting to straight percentage after. It answers the movable GP's biggest financial fear: "I leave a full book behind and start from zero." If your vacancy has been open for months, this is often the structural fix, and it costs you nothing if the book fills at the pace you're promising. Relocation offers have their own dynamics: see regional clinic recruitment.

How do you decide the percentage?

From three inputs, in order: what the doctor can actually bill in your clinic, what your local market is offering, and what the role costs the doctor. In that order, because patient demand, not the split, is the real offer, and the market you have to beat is the clinics within your hiring radius, not the national average.

1. What the doctor can actually bill in your clinic. Patient demand is the real offer. A full book at a modest split beats a generous split at an empty desk: an average full-time GP writes around $336,000 a year in billings (Cubiko practice benchmarks), but that assumes patients. If your books are overflowing, say so with numbers: appointment wait times, patients per day available from day one. That's more persuasive than two extra points of split.
2. What your local market is offering. Your competition is the clinics within your hiring radius, not the national average. DPA/MM status changes this sharply: a regional DPA clinic competing for the small pool of eligible doctors prices differently than a metro MM1 clinic.
3. What the role costs the doctor. Longer commute, heavier admin, on-call, weekend roster: each is a debit the offer has to cover somewhere.

What matters to a GP besides the money?

Five things: the roster, the admin load and autonomy, the patient mix, the team, and whether the offer resolves the specific friction in their current role. Each decides more moves than percentage points do. On real sales calls with clinic owners the money question is asked most, but on the doctor's side of the table it is these that tip decisions:

• The roster, exactly. School-hours availability, a true four-day week, no Saturdays. For a large share of the GP workforce these outrank income. If you can flex, that flexibility is your offer. Lead with it.
• Admin load and autonomy. How many patients an hour is expected, who writes the care plans, how much say the GP has over their own book. Doctors leave clinics over this more than over money.
• The patient mix. A GP with a special interest (skin, women's health, chronic disease, mental health) will move for a book that feeds it. If your demographics fit, that's an offer no split matches.
• The team and the principal. Doctors join practices they'd want to be patients at. Who they'd share a corridor with, whether the practice feels run or chaotic: this is why outreach from the practice owner outperforms recruiter approaches (why doctors reply to clinics, not recruiters).
• The exit story from their current clinic. The employed GP you want has friction where they are: full book with no support, a split that never improved, a principal who won't discuss the roster. Your offer wins by resolving their specific friction, which you only learn by talking to them, not by broadcasting a package.

The pattern across all five: they are cheap for the clinic and expensive for the doctor to live without. Two percentage points of split cost a practice real money every week; a protected half-day, a cap on care-plan admin, or a roster that ends at school pick-up often costs little beyond the willingness to organise it, and for the right doctor it is the difference between staying put and moving. The clinics that win candidates without winning bidding wars are the ones that have worked out which of these they can genuinely structure, before the first conversation.

You find out which one matters by asking, early and directly. A doctor considering a move will tell you what is wrong where they are: the book that filled with no support, the Saturdays that were meant to be temporary, the special interest that never gets fed. The first conversation should spend more time on their current situation than on your practice. Whatever they volunteer is the offer to lead with; everything else is background.

Then put it in writing with the same specificity as the split. "Flexible roster" commits you to nothing and reassures nobody; "Tuesdays and Thursdays finishing in time for school pick-up, reviewed after six months" is a term a doctor can plan a life around. Non-money terms only count when they are as concrete as the money. Otherwise the doctor discounts them, correctly, as goodwill that may not survive the first busy quarter.

How do you get the offer in front of the right doctors?

Directly, under your clinic's own name: the offer has to land in front of specific doctors, not wait to be found. A well-structured offer that nobody suitable ever sees fills nothing: around 70% of professionals aren't job-hunting at any given moment (LinkedIn Talent Solutions), so the GP your offer would genuinely improve life for is employed nearby and not reading listings.

That's a reach problem, not an offer problem: the offer needs to land in front of them, specifically, from your clinic, with the parts that answer their situation up front.

That's the model Taro builds: your catchment mapped, your role (specific, in your name) put directly in front of every practitioner in reach, and interested replies landing with you the same day. What you offer stays your decision; being seen by the doctors it would win is the part we industrialise.

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