General practice activity in Australia 1998-99 to 2007-08: 10 year data tables

This publication is the 23rd 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 presents results from each of the ten years of the BEACH program, April 1998 to March 2008. There have been 9,875 participating GPs who have provided details of almost 1 million GP-patient encounters, made up of ten annual samples of about 100,000 encounters records from around 1,000 randomly selected general practitioners. Results are provided for the more frequent events occurring in general practice in any of the ten years of the study. Readers can review changes that have occurred over the decade in the characteristics of general practitioners and the patients they see; the problems managed and the treatments provided. Information on body weight to height ratio, smoking status and alcohol use for annual subsamples of patients in each year, 1998-99 to 2007-08, is provided.