A new smartphone application will enable lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Australians to search for friendly and specialised general practitioners.
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The plans come as public health experts warn many LGBT Australians may be hesitant to access primary care because they feel anxious, uncomfortable or have previously experienced discrimination.
The application, which is expected to launch this year, will allow users to review and rate local GPs with the hope it may make visiting a doctor a less confronting experience.
Dr Darshini Ayton, a public health specialist and research fellow at Monash University, said health professions often lacked a nuanced understanding of the LGBT community's hesitations about visiting a doctor.
"For the patient there are also issues of understanding what their rights are and knowing whether the doctor will tell anyone about their sexuality – especially if it's the same doctor their parents go to," she said.
"The other big challenge young people face is a poor level of health literacy, with trouble working out what bulk-billing or Medicare really mean to them.
"Navigating through these terms on top of feeling anxious about going to the doctor in the first place can be challenging."
Founder of the Better Practice, Better Care app Jacob Thomas said he launched the project after talking with others who felt disrespected after visiting a local doctor.
"The drive behind the app came from some personal experiences in my life as well as those experiences of others involved with the project," he said.
Mr Thomas, who is also the director of the national support group It Gets Better, said he visited a local doctor with a chest infection and became uncomfortable when asked about his sex life and pressured to take an HIV test.
"That experience sparked something in me and I wanted to do something that changes the ability for the community to just get into a doctor's service where they are seen as people and not by their sexual orientation," he said.
Dr Ayton said access to primary care was a key determinant of health, and anxiety and discrimination only complicated matters for young people.
"A lot of it comes down to basic community development so professionals understand the needs, culture and language of the community and are able to adopt that in health services to break down barriers."
Mr Thomas said by making friendly services more visible to the LGBT community there was a chance more people would access primary healthcare on a regular basis.
"We like to think of the app as the Urbanspoon for queer-safe doctors," he said, referring to the restaurant information and recommendation service. "You can also do a postcode search in case you are travelling and need to find a suitable doctor."
He said doctors could apply to be listed on the application and would then complete a survey to assess their level of understanding or practices.
"If we have to deal with assumptions being made about us then we don't want to fall back into that pattern when assessing the knowledge base of those practitioners," he said.
"We've also tailored the app so a user can search for a service that is tailored to a certain subgroup of the LGBT community, with the letter lighting up to categorise results."
Dr Ayton said GPs had made efforts to understand the specific needs of many sections of the Australian community and there was no reason this could not be done for the LGBT community.
