Most practices think about being found in two places: Google, and increasingly, whatever answer an AI assistant gives when somebody asks it for a recommendation.

There is a third place, and it sits underneath both. It is a national directory of health services, run by a Commonwealth agency, and your practice may already be in it with details you have never checked.

The healthdirect Service Finder

The Service Finder is the consumer-facing search tool of the National Health Services Directory, run by Healthdirect Australia. It covers general practices, pharmacies, dentists, psychologists, pathology, optical and a wide range of allied health services.

Healthdirect states the Service Finder receives over a million searches each month.

That figure is worth pausing on. It is not the most important thing about this directory.

The part that is not marketing

NHSD data is used inside clinical systems.

Healthdirect states the data supports clinical workflows, including helping healthcare professionals identify suitable providers for referrals, and enabling discharge summaries to reach a patient’s regular provider. Hospitals draw practice contact details from it.

Read that again with a stale listing in mind.

An out-of-date NHSD entry is not a missed search result. It is a referral sent to a phone number that changed two years ago. It is a discharge summary that does not arrive, for a patient who assumes their practice knows they were in hospital.

This is the reason the Service Finder is worth ten minutes of a practice manager’s attention even if not one patient ever uses it to find you.

How a listing gets there, and who maintains it

There are two routes in. A practice can register directly with the NHSD, or register with Provider Connect Australia, which allows a practice to maintain its business information in one place and publish it to the Service Finder and other partners. Healthdirect states that a practice registering through Provider Connect Australia can publish to the Service Finder the same day.

Both are free.

Maintenance sits with the practice, not with Healthdirect. Healthdirect states that healthcare services are responsible for maintaining their listings, and recommends reviewing them at least every twelve months. A listing that is already public can be corrected using the “suggest an edit” button on the listing itself.

That division of responsibility is the whole problem in one sentence. The directory is national infrastructure. The accuracy of your entry in it is your job, and nobody will tell you when it stops being right.

One further point for general practices. From November 2025, practices participating in the Commonwealth’s Bulk Billing Practice Incentive Payment program were required to list their bulk-billing services in the NHSD, making them visible in Service Finder.

Why a directory listing matters for AI search

A listing is not only a place a person might click.

When an AI system is asked to recommend a service, it does not only read the practice’s own website. It draws on what other sources say about you. A practice named consistently across a Commonwealth health directory, a professional register and its own site is a more legible entity than one that exists only on its own domain.

This is the part that is easy to miss. Work on your own website is work on the one source you control. Directory listings are work on the sources you do not, and those are the ones that establish a practice as a real thing in the world rather than as a claim it makes about itself.

What to actually do

Search the healthdirect Service Finder for your own practice name. Not your profession, and not your suburb — your name.

Then ask three questions about what comes back.

  • Are you there at all.
  • Is the phone number the one you would want a hospital to use.
  • Are the practitioners listed the ones who still work there.

None of this requires a marketing budget. Most of it requires an afternoon.

Common questions about healthdirect and the directory

Who uses the National Health Services Directory besides patients?

Healthdirect states that the directory’s data supports clinical workflows, including helping healthcare professionals identify suitable providers for referrals, and enabling discharge summaries to reach a patient’s regular provider. Hospitals draw practice contact details from it.

How do I check my practice’s listing?

Search the healthdirect Service Finder for your practice name. Then check three things: whether the practice is there at all, whether the phone number is the one you would want a hospital to use, and whether the practitioners listed are the ones who still work there. Keeping the listing accurate is the practice’s responsibility, and a public listing can be corrected using the “suggest an edit” button on the listing itself.

Sources

All from Healthdirect Australia:

All sources accessed 12 September 2026. Directory coverage, registration routes and program requirements are set by Healthdirect Australia and the Commonwealth, and do change. Verify current detail before relying on anything here.