There has been a significant increase in the proportion of
encounters charged by GPs as long consultations over the past five
years, according to a new report released today by the University
of Sydney and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
General Practice Activity in Australia 2002-03 shows
that just over 9% of GP consultations were charged as long
encounters in 2002-03, compared with 7% in 1998-99.
GPs provided fewer indirect consultations, that is, providing
services to their patients without physically seeing them, than
five years ago. Patients were also significantly more likely to
report coming to the GP to get their test results.
Director of the AIHW's General Practice Statistics and
Classification Unit at the University of Sydney, Professor Helena
Britt, said that 'together these findings suggest that patients are
being asked to return to their GP rather than get telephone reports
of the results of investigations and tests'.
'This tendency may reflect increasing economic pressures on
general practice, since phone contacts cannot be claimed through
Medicare. Another reason may be the introduction of the revised
policy guidelines regarding ensuring information is given to the
right person.'
The report showed that the trend for less prescribed medications
continued in 2002-03. GPs provided nine fewer prescribed
medications at every 100 patient encounters, which means that they
wrote about 9 million fewer prescriptions last year across the
country than they did five years ago.
'Considering the wide international concern about the levels of
use of antibiotics, it was good to see that this decrease was
particularly apparent in the prescribing of antibiotics for upper
respiratory tract infections', said Professor Britt. 'However, this
was due to a decrease in prescribing of cephalosporins, with no
change in prescribing of broad spectrum penicillins.
'The overall management rate of upper respiratory tract
infections has not changed since 1998-99, which suggests that
public education programs (a cold lasts 14 days with or without
antibiotics) have had little impact on attendance rates for this
problem.'
Other findings include:
- About one-third of all children aged 2 to 17 who went to see a
GP were considered overweight or obese. Being overweight or obese
was most likely in the 9-12 age group.
- Data about the current smoking status of people seen by GPs
showed a significant drop in daily smoking prevalence over the past
two years, from 19.2% to 17.2%.
- Findings from GP encounters with Indigenous people demonstrate
very high management rates of diabetes, asthma, acute bronchitis,
otitis media, pregnancy, tonsillitis and boil/carbuncle.
General Practice Activity in Australia 2002-03 is part
of the BEACH (Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health) program,
a continuous national study of general practice activity. Since the
study began in 1998 it has built a database of more than half a
million GP-patient encounters.
3 December 2003
Further information: A/Prof Helena Britt, tel.
(02) 9845 8150 or 0411 197 938
Media copies of the report: Publications Officer,
AIHW tel. (02) 6244 1032, OR Media Office, University of Sydney, 02
9351 2261
Availability: Check the AIHW
Publications Catalogue for details.