Primary health care

Having timely access to health-care professionals when a person needs it is crucial to preventing, treating and managing health conditions. In 2016, 1 in 4 patients did not see a GP, and 1 in 8 patients did not see a specialist, even when they felt they needed to. This report looks at the associations between selected patient characteristics and self-reported experiences of barriers to accessing GPs and specialists.

Australian adults report their experiences of more than 20 aspects of health and health care in the latest web update. Information from 2013–14 to 2017–18 is presented by Primary Health Network areas across Australia, on topics including self-reported health status, use of health services and cost barriers to accessing services.

The Online Services Report (OSR) and the national Key Performance Indicators (nKPI) collect data from the organisations funded by the Australian Government to deliver comprehensive and culturally appropriate primary health care services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. AIHW undertook a review of these data sets for the Department of Health. This report highlights the importance of these data collections, summarises the findings of the review and presents a series of recommendations for their improvement in the future.

The potentially preventable hospitalisations (PPH) indicator is a proxy measure of primary care effectiveness. PPH are specific hospital admissions that potentially could have been prevented by timely and adequate health care in the community. This report highlights disparities in PPH rates between populations, particularly the very young and the elderly, those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, remote areas, and Indigenous Australians, and illustrates some challenges and opportunities for PPH reporting.

More information is available in the companion web report Disparities in potentially preventable hospitalisations across Australia: Exploring the data.

The potentially preventable hospitalisations (PPH) indicator is a proxy measure of primary care effectiveness. PPH are specific hospital admissions that potentially could have been prevented by timely and adequate health care in the community. This report highlights disparities in PPH rates between populations, particularly the very young and the elderly, those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, remote areas, and Indigenous Australians, and illustrates some challenges and opportunities for PPH reporting.

More information is available in the companion PDF report Disparities in potentially preventable hospitalisations across Australia, 2012–13 to 2017–18.

This web report provides interactive data displays on the national asthma indicators published in the National Asthma Strategy 2018 by the National Asthma Council (National Asthma Strategy).

The indicators provide insights on how common asthma is in Australia; asthma related deaths, hospital visits and general practice encounters; the use of asthma action plans, impact of asthma on quality of life, and the cost of asthma to the Australian healthcare system.

Fact sheet: Monitoring asthma in Australia

The potentially preventable hospitalisations (PPH) indicator is a proxy measure of primary care effectiveness. PPH are certain hospital admissions that potentially could have been prevented by timely and adequate health care in the community. There are 22 conditions for which hospitalisation is considered potentially preventable, across 3 broad categories: chronic, acute and vaccine-preventable conditions. This 2017–18 data update provides information by Primary Health Network (PHN) and Statistical Area Level 3 (SA3). Rates for two age groups (for people aged under 65 years, and 65 years and over) are also included.

Across Australia, use of non-hospital Medicare-subsidised services, such as GP, allied health, specialist and diagnostic imaging, varies considerably depending on where a patient lives. This variation may reflect differences in patients’ health and health care preferences, population growth and accessibility of services (availability, costs and service options).

This report provides an assessment of state and territory performance against 4 of the 5 performance benchmarks outlined in the National Partnership on Essential Vaccines, for the assessment period 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018. The fifth benchmark was not assessed in this period. The report shows that 6 jurisdictions met all 4 benchmarks, with one benchmark being either partly met or not met in each of the other 2 jurisdictions.

Some presentations to hospital emergency departments that are for lower urgency care may be avoidable through provision of other appropriate health services in the community. Although the use of emergency departments for this type of care has fallen nationally, there is marked variation across areas. For example, rates in regional Primary Health Network (PHN) areas were almost twice as high (159 per 1,000 people) as in metropolitan PHN areas (92 per 1,000 people).

This is the tenth national report on organisations funded by the Australian Government to provide health services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In 2017–18, nearly 200 organisations provided a range of primary health services to around 483,000 clients, 81% of whom were Indigenous. Around 3.6 million episodes of care were provided, nearly 3.1 million of these (85%) by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services.

This is the first Tableau report using data from the national Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs) data collection. Information is presented for the reporting periods June 2017, December 2017 and June 2018 across 24 indicators, focusing on maternal and child health, preventative health, and chronic disease management. More than 270,000 Indigenous regular clients attended organisations that reported nKPI data in June 2018.

This report examined the health services used by more than 37,300 people with coronary heart disease (CHD) who were discharged from a public hospital in New South Wales or Victoria between April 2012 and June 2013. The report analysed linked de-identified hospitalisation data to Medicare Benefits Schedule data and National Death Index data.

The report shows that the vast majority of CHD patients visited their General Practitioner (GP) within 30 days of being discharged from hospital and that they had, on average, 1 or 2 visits per month during a two year follow-up timeframe. Timely and regular contact with a GP were associated with lower risk of having an emergency re-admission to hospital for cardiovascular disease.

This fifth national report on the national Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs) data collection is based on data from 231 primary health care organisations that receive funding from the Australian Government Department of Health to provide services primarily to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Information is presented for December 2017, for 24 ‘process-of-care’ and ‘health outcome’ indicators, focusing on maternal and child health, preventative health, and chronic disease management. The report shows improvements for the majority of indicators between June and December 2017.

Four key maternal and child health indicators have been updated in this release — smoking during pregnancy, child and infant mortality, low birthweight babies, and antenatal visits in the first trimester of pregnancy. Indicators are reported nationally, by Primary Health Network (PHN) areas and by smaller local areas.

This report was first published on the MyHealthyCommunities website.

Australian adults report their experiences on more than 20 aspects of health and care in the latest web update. Information from 2014–2015 to 2016–2017 is presented by Primary Health Network areas across Australia, covering topics including self-reported health status, use of health services and cost barriers to accessing services.

This report was first published on the MyHealthyCommunities website.

New data in this web update provides local-level information for 15 measures of health care use across Australia for 2016−17. Results are presented for the 31 Primary Health Network (PHN) areas and smaller local areas called Statistical Areas Level 3 (SA3).

This report was first published on the MyHealthyCommunities website.