Australia Medicare Card Identifier

Identifies Australian Medicare card numbers (10-11 digits, first digit 2-6). Filters same-digit sequences. Requires corroborative health-scheme keywords for reliable detection.

Type

regex

Engine

universal

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

Medium confidence: 10-11 digit numbers are common in the wild. The Medicare checksum validator and health-scheme keywords significantly improve accuracy. AllDigitsSameFilter removes trivial matches.

Detection quality

Mixed

Jurisdictions

au

Regulations

HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)

Frameworks

ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2

Data categories

phi, health, government-id

Scope

narrow

Risk rating

5

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

\b[2-6]\d{3}[\s-]?\d{5}[\s-]?\d(?:[\s-]?\d)?\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

health scheme, health fund, provider number, patient ID, medical account, Medibank, bulk billing, health cover, medicare, medicare number, medicare card, medicare no, health insurance number

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• 2123456701 — Ten-digit Medicare card number (first digit 2-6), passes mod-10 checksum
• 2270 19324 8 — Ten-digit Medicare card with display spacing, passes mod-10 checksum
• 4851 93897 0 1 — Eleven-digit Medicare card with IRN, passes mod-10 checksum

Should not match

• 1234567890 — First digit 1, not a valid Medicare prefix (2-6)
• 234567 — Too short for a Medicare card number
• 234567890123 — Twelve digits, too long
• 2270193258 — fails mod-10 checksum (single-digit perturbation of valid value 2270 19324 8)
• 4851 93898 0 — fails mod-10 checksum (single-digit perturbation of valid value 4851 93897 0)

Known false positives

• Generic 10-11 digit reference numbers in non-health contexts. Mitigation: Require health-scheme keywords in proximity. The Medicare checksum validator and AllDigitsSameFilter remove non-conforming and trivial matches.

References

• Australia Medical Account Number entity definition - Microsoft Learn

Collections

• Australian Public Sector Tuned Identifiers