The release of two new health reports last week, ‘General practice activity in Australia 2012–13’ and ‘A decade of Australian general practice 2002–02 to 2012–13’ has highlighted the crucial role general practitioners (GPs) play in providing high quality healthcare to Australians.
The reports, released by the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) program, detail a dramatic increase in patients seeking care from GPs from 96.3 million in 2003–04 to 126.8 million in 2012–13 - an increase of 31.7%.
RACGP President, Dr Liz Marles, said this statistic reaffirms the reliance Australian communities are placing on Australian GPs as the first point of contact in addressing healthcare concerns.
“General practice and primary healthcare provide integrated and whole-person care delivery, a delivery model that is well known to improve patient health outcomes and effectively lower overall healthcare costs,” said Dr Marles.
“In light of these reports, the Government is urged to further commit to ensuring general practice is adequately resourced and funded to continue to deliver critical healthcare services to Australian communities,” said Dr Marles.
The reports also highlight the central role GPs play in preventive health measures with approximately half of those recorded patients visiting their GPs presenting with at least one health risk factor.
Dr Marles said this figure underscores the pivotal role that GPs play in health promotion and management of risk before the onset of disease later in life.
“Preventive health measures undertaken throughout a patients’ life play a significant role in reducing hospital admissions, the occurrence of medical complications and the onset of acute and chronic disease,” said Dr Marles.
The management of chronic diseases at a general practice level is known to alleviate the pressure placed on the tertiary healthcare system. The reports details that 36% of all GP consults were attributed to the ongoing care of a chronic condition, further highlighting the growing need for these services in general practice as Australia’s population continues to age.
Despite Australia’s ageing population’s reliance on GPs, the rate of GP visits to Residential aged care facilities (RACFs) is recorded at a mere 1.7% per 100 encounters billed to the Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS).
“This is a concerning statistic, and the RACGP is working hard to break down barriers associated with proving care to patients in RACFs.
“Provision of general practice services in aged care is a prime example of an area of practice where non-contact work, such as providing clinical advice to residential aged care facility nursing staff and writing scripts, is not financially supported, despite being complex and time consuming,” Dr Marles said.
The RACGP congratulates Associate Professor Helena Britt and fellow research teams on delivering such high quality and valuable research reports that will have numerous benefits for the general practice profession.