General practice activity in Australia 2007-08

OUT OF PRINT

Phone, fax or email orders:

CanPrint
Tel. 1300 889 873
Fax 02 6293 8333
Email

Read the related media release.

View other publications in the same series: General practice series.

View other publications by the same authors: Bayram C, Britt H, Charles J, Fahridin S, Harrison C, Henderson J, Miller GC, O'Halloran J, Pan Y & Valenti L.

View other publications in the same subject area: General practice.

General practice series no. 22

This publication is the 22nd in the General practice series produced by the Australian General Practice Statistics and Classification Centre, a collaborating unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the University of Sydney. It reports the results of the tenth year of the BEACH program, April 2007 to March 2008. Data reported by 953 general practitioners on 95,300 GP-patient encounters are used to describe aspects of general practice in Australia: the general practitioners and their patients; the problems managed and the treatments provided. The contribution of practice nurses to the GP-patient encounters in terms of their clinical activities, the problems they assist with and the Medicare items claimed, are described in this report. Information on body weight to height ratio, smoking status and alcohol use for a subsample of patients is also provided.

Authored by Bayram C, Britt H, Charles J, Fahridin S, Harrison C, Henderson J, Miller GC, O'Halloran J, Pan Y & Valenti L.

Published 3 October 2008; ISSN 1442-3022; ISBN-13 978 1 74024 828 0; AIHW cat. no. GEP 22; 160pp.; OUT OF PRINT

View online for free

Accessibility: If you have difficulty accessing the information in this publication, please contact us via to request an alternative format such as Word or RTF. We will respond to your request within two working days.

On this page:

Full publication (2.50MB PDF)

  • Preliminary material (89KB PDF)
    • Half title and verso pages
    • Title and verso pages
    • Foreword
    • Acknowledgments
    • Contents
    • Abbreviations
    • Executive summary (HTML)
  • Body sections
    1. Overview (54KB PDF)
      1. Background
      2. The BEACH program
      3. Issues when using BEACH data with other national data
      4. Access to BEACH data
    2. Methods (87KB PDF)
      1. Sampling methods
      2. Recruitment methods
      3. Data elements
      4. Supplementary Analysis of Nominated Data
      5. The BEACH relational database
      6. Statistical methods
      7. Classification of data
      8. Quality assurance
      9. Validity and reliability
      10. Other BEACH applications
    3. The sample (60KB PDF)
      1. Response rate
      2. Representativeness of the GP sample
      3. Weighting the data
      4. Representativeness of the final encounter sample
      5. The weighted data set
    4. The participating GPs (55KB PDF)
      1. Characteristics of the GP participants
      2. Computer use at GP practices
    5. The encounters (63KB PDF)
      1. Content of the encounters
      2. Encounter type
      3. Consultation length
    6. The patients (71KB PDF)
      1. Age-sex distribution of patients at encounter
      2. Other patient characteristics
      3. Patient reasons for encounter
    7. Problems managed (89KB PDF)
      1. Number of problems managed at encounter
      2. Problems managed by ICPC-2 chapter
      3. Problems managed by ICPC-2 component
      4. Most frequently managed problems
      5. Most common new problems
      6. Most frequently managed chronic problems
      7. Work-related problems managed
    8. Overview of management (51KB PDF)
    9. Medications (106KB PDF)
      1. Source of medications
      2. Prescribed medications
      3. Medications supplied by GPs
      4. Medications advised for over-the-counter purchase
    10. Other treatments (63KB PDF)
      1. Number of other treatments
      2. Clinical treatments
      3. Procedural treatments
    11. Referrals and admissions (70KB PDF)
      1. Number of referrals and admissions
      2. Most frequent referrals
      3. Problems most often referred
    12. Investigations (69KB PDF)
      1. Number of investigations
      2. Pathology ordering
      3. Imaging ordering
      4. Other investigations
    13. Practice nurse activity (66KB PDF)
      1. Practice nurse Medicare claims versus practice nurse activity
      2. Discussion
    14. Patient risk factors (89KB PDF)
      1. Body mass index
      2. Smoking (patients aged 18 years and over)
      3. Alcohol consumption (patients aged 18 years and over)
      4. Risk factor profile of adult patients
    15. SAND abstracts and research tools (1.07MB PDF)
  • End matter
    • References (34KB PDF)
    • Glossary (38KB PDF)
    • Appendices (173KB PDF) 1
      1. Example of a 2007-08 recording form
      2. GP characteristics questionnaire, 2007-08
      3. Dissemination of results from the BEACH program
      4. Code groups from ICPC-2 andICPC-2 PLUS
      5. Chronic code groups from ICPC-2 and ICPC-2 PLUS
    • List of tables (28K PDF)
    • List of figures (21K PDF)

Additional material

Appendices 3-5 (422KB PDF) 1

  1. Dissemination of results from the BEACH program
  2. Code groups from ICPC-2 and ICPC-2 PLUS
  3. Chronic code groups from ICPC-2 and ICPC-2 PLUS

Notes and corrections

The current version of the publication is presented above.

Previous versions of files that have been updated or corrected are presented below.

  1. Appendices 3-5 were not available as part of the printed copy. (3 October 2008)