Short answer: If you are in an emergency department or admitted to a public hospital, imaging happens there, and as a public patient it costs you nothing. For almost everything else the choice is yours: by law, an imaging request form can be taken to any provider you like, even when it is printed with a particular clinic’s logo. A private clinic that bulk bills also costs you nothing. The hospital earns its place when you need equipment it hosts — PET is the clearest example — or when your previous scans already live on its system.
- Who decides where you get scanned?
- What will each option cost?
- Which scans live where?
- Does it matter where your last scan was done?
- Six questions to settle before you book
- Common questions about hospital and clinic imaging
- How we know: sources and method
Who decides where you get scanned?
There are only three ways into an imaging appointment, and which one you came through decides who gets to choose.
Emergency or admitted: the hospital decides. If you arrive through the emergency department or you are an inpatient, the treating team orders imaging and the hospital’s own department does it, usually within hours. You do not book anything, and there is no decision for you to make.
Hospital outpatient clinics: mostly the hospital decides. If a public hospital clinic is following you up — after surgery, say — healthdirect notes that follow-up care runs through the hospital’s own outpatient clinics. Scans ordered as part of that public outpatient care are free, like the rest of your treatment, and the clinic tells you how its imaging gets booked.
A request form from your GP or specialist: you decide. This is most scans, and the rule surprises people: the MBS diagnostic imaging notes state that a written request does not need to be addressed to a particular provider — and even when it is, the scan does not have to be done there. If a request form carries a clinic’s branding, it must, by the same rules, tell you that “the request may be taken to a diagnostic imaging provider of the patient’s choice”. InsideRadiology, RANZCR’s patient site, puts it plainly for CT: you can generally take your doctor’s request to a facility that suits your location and finances.
One caveat before you drive across town — and this is the radiologist’s practice note, not a Medicare rule: the right attaches to the form, not to any particular front desk. Private clinics take outside request forms as standard, but many public hospital departments book non-urgent outpatient scans only for their own emergency, inpatient and clinic patients, so a GP request form is not a guarantee they will scan you. Phone the department first if a hospital is your preference.
Speed is the factor most people weigh first, and it usually favours the private clinic for routine outpatient scans while non-urgent public lists run longer — the full comparison, including what to do when your scan is genuinely urgent, is in our guide to radiology wait times in Australia.
What will each option cost?
Four billing outcomes cover the whole field, and you can predict yours before you book.
Public patient in a public hospital: $0. Imaging ordered while you are an emergency, inpatient or public outpatient is part of your free treatment under Medicare — in healthdirect’s words, “you will not be charged for medical services, hospital accommodation and other relevant services”. The trade-off is control: the hospital sets the timing and you are treated by the doctors it selects.
Bulk-billed private clinic: $0. The clinic bills Medicare directly and accepts the benefit as full payment — for almost all imaging items that benefit is 95% of the schedule fee, under the MBS bulk-billing rule for imaging. Whether a clinic bulk bills your particular item is its own decision, and many decide item by item; our bulk-billed radiology guide covers how to find the clinics that do.
Privately billed clinic: you pay the gap. For out-of-hospital services Medicare pays 85% of the schedule fee (MBS note GN.10.26); whatever the clinic charges above that benefit is yours. Clinics set their own fees, so the same item can cost $0 at one practice and a three-figure gap at another on the same street.
Private patient in hospital: Medicare pays 75%, your insurer may cover the rest. This is the only setting where private health insurance touches your imaging bill. Outside hospital it cannot help: the Department of Health states that by law, private health insurance does not cover out-of-hospital medical services, and it names diagnostic imaging and tests explicitly.
All of this assumes your scan attracts a Medicare rebate at all — that depends on the item on your referral, and our guide to which scans are Medicare-eligible by modality works through each scan type.
Which scans live where?
For everyday imaging the two settings overlap almost completely. InsideRadiology notes that CT, for example, is carried out at most registered hospitals and private radiology practices alike, and the same is true of X-ray and ultrasound. The differences sit at the edges — and the edges matter if your scan is one of them.
| Decision factor | Public hospital department | Private radiology clinic |
|---|---|---|
| How you usually arrive | Through ED, an admission or a hospital outpatient clinic | With a request form from your GP or specialist |
| What you pay | Nothing as a public patient | Nothing if bulk billed; the gap above the 85% Medicare benefit if billed privately |
| Everyday scans (X-ray, CT, ultrasound, MRI) | Available | Available |
| Scarce services | Hosts many of the country’s PET units | PET mostly at hospitals and larger practices; highly specialised CT not offered everywhere |
| Your previous scans | On the hospital’s system if you were scanned or treated there | Held by the clinic network that performed them |
The pattern in the table is real, not folklore. The Department of Health’s official list of PET units (updated 22 May 2026) is thick with public hospital departments — Royal Prince Alfred, Royal North Shore, the Royal Melbourne, Peter MacCallum and St Vincent’s Melbourne among them. Why PET concentrates there, and how to book one, is covered in our PET scan guide. At the other edge, InsideRadiology cautions that highly specialised CT — scanning a baby, coronary artery CT, CT colonography — is not something every facility can do, so the right question is never “do you have a CT scanner” but “do you do this exact study”.
The mix is visible in our own directory: of the roughly 940 imaging listings nationally, about 197 are hospital imaging departments and about 740 are private clinics and other providers, as at July 2026. You can browse the hospital imaging departments as their own category.
Does it matter where your last scan was done?
More than most people expect. A radiologist reading your new scan against the old one can say whether that lung nodule has grown, whether the fracture is healing, whether the report should say “stable” instead of “indeterminate” — and that comparison is easiest where the old images already are. InsideRadiology’s advice for CT is direct: if you have had a previous scan of the same part of the body, it is useful to go back to the same department so the radiologist can compare old and new together.
That cuts both ways. If your history is at the local hospital — an admission last year, surgery before that — the hospital department reads your new scan with that context. If you have used the same private network for years, its radiologists have your baseline instead.
Priors are portable, but only if someone moves them. When you book somewhere new, tell the staff where and roughly when the last scan was done and ask them to request the images before your appointment; clinics and hospitals do this routinely, and it works far better with three days’ notice than on the day.
Six questions to settle before you book
If you are holding a request form and deciding where to take it, these six questions settle the choice in one phone call each.
- 1. Will you take this request form? Private clinics accept outside forms as standard; public hospital departments set their own intake rules, and some only scan their own emergency, inpatient and clinic patients. Ask this first — it decides whether the rest of the call matters.
- 2. How urgent did my doctor say this is? Genuinely urgent scans move fast in both systems — your referrer can mark the request urgent and phone ahead. If nobody has said “urgent”, you are choosing on cost and convenience, not safety.
- 3. Will you bulk bill this item on this request? Read the item straight off the form when you call. A yes means you pay nothing; anything else, ask for the out-of-pocket amount in dollars before you accept the appointment.
- 4. Do you do this exact study? Especially for children’s imaging, cardiac CT and anything the referrer called specialised. A clinic that does not offer the study will usually say so — but only if you ask before booking, not after arriving.
- 5. My previous scans were done at X — can you get them for comparison? If the answer is no and the priors matter, that is a good reason to go back to where they are.
- 6. How does my doctor get the results? The radiologist’s report goes to your referrer either way; ask how long it takes and whether you can access the images yourself.
To see what is actually within reach — hospital departments and private clinics side by side — start from the city pages for Melbourne and Sydney, or the four-city comparison that also covers Brisbane and Perth.
Common questions about hospital and clinic imaging
Can I use a request form somewhere other than the clinic printed on it?
Yes. The MBS notes are explicit: a request does not have to be addressed to a particular provider, and a branded form must tell you it can be taken to a provider of your choice. No new request is needed — though the form only gives you the right to shop around, not a guarantee that every department will book you, so ask whether they accept outside forms when you call.
Does my imaging request expire?
No — the MBS factsheet on requests and referrals states there is no general time limit on a diagnostic imaging request’s validity, unlike specialist referrals, which do expire. If a request is many months old, expect the practice to check with your doctor that the scan is still clinically appropriate before going ahead.
Is a scan at a public hospital always free?
As a public patient, yes — imaging that is part of your emergency, inpatient or public outpatient care is free under Medicare. If you elect to be a private patient in hospital, Medicare pays 75% of the schedule fee (MBS note GN.10.26) and your hospital cover and the hospital’s billing determine the rest.
Will my private health insurance pay for a scan at a radiology clinic?
No. By law, private health insurance cannot cover out-of-hospital medical services, diagnostic imaging and tests included — it only comes into play while you are a private patient in hospital.
Is the report better at a hospital than at a private clinic?
No — in both settings your images are examined by a radiologist who writes a report to your doctor, and many radiologists work across both in the same week. Choose on access, cost and where your previous imaging lives; the reporting standard is not the variable.
How we know: sources and method
The billing and referral rules on this page were read directly from the official sources on 7 July 2026 — the MBS diagnostic imaging notes and factsheets, the Department of Health’s private health insurance and PET location pages, healthdirect and InsideRadiology. The counts are the clinics and hospital departments published in the Imaging Finder directory in July 2026; they show how the two settings share the map, not what any one site offers on a given day. Fees and benefit percentages change with indexation, so treat the percentages as the structure of the system and the clinic’s quoted dollar figure as the number that binds.
- MBS note IN.0.6: diagnostic imaging request requirements and patient choice — accessed 7 July 2026
- MBS factsheet: requests for diagnostic imaging versus referrals — accessed 7 July 2026
- MBS note GN.10.26: Medicare benefit levels (85% / 75%) — accessed 7 July 2026
- MBS note IN.0.19: 95% benefit for bulk-billed diagnostic imaging — accessed 7 July 2026
- healthdirect: public and private hospital systems — accessed 7 July 2026
- Department of Health: what private health insurance covers — accessed 7 July 2026
- Department of Health: PET units in Australia (updated 22 May 2026) — accessed 7 July 2026
- InsideRadiology (RANZCR): computed tomography — accessed 7 July 2026
This article is general information, not personal medical advice. Availability, Medicare eligibility, billing and preparation can change — confirm the specifics with your referrer and the clinic.
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