Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031 Outcomes Framework: 4th annual report

Preventive and early intervention health services that are timely, comprehensive, appropriate and effective, support better overall health and wellbeing. People with disability experience preventable health conditions and comorbidities at higher rates than people without disability, placing them at substantially higher risk of adverse health outcomes. Access to early interventions, regular health assessments and rehabilitation improves long-term outcomes for individuals and can help to reduce future costs of care and support. 

The purpose of the “Prevention and early intervention” policy priority is to improve access to preventive and primary health care services for people with disability. There are 3 measures under this policy priority area:

• GP-type emergency presentations (updated)
• Medical facility accessibility
• Access to preventive health care (baseline added).

The updated measure is discussed below.

Measure: GP-type emergency presentations

Full name – Number of GP-type emergency department presentations per 100,000 people with disability

A visit to a hospital emergency department where the care or service received in emergency could have, instead, been provided by a general practitioner (GP) is an avoidable emergency presentation. Factors such as cost, geographic location, accessibility of facilities and unavailability of other health services can affect which health service is visited (AIHW 2020). For more information, see Data Dictionary: GP-type emergency presentations.

This measure replaced the previous measure – Number of people with disability with GP-type emergency department presentations.

The measure looks at the number of GP-type emergency department presentations per 100,000 people with disability. In 2025, this measure is disaggregated by sex and age group only.

For figure notes, see Appendix B: Figure notes and sources.