Every year almost nine in 10 Australians visit a GP. In 2023, 22 million Australians visited their GP, making GPs the most highly utilised and accessed health professionals within the health system. In the same year, over 169 million health services were provided by GPs, meaning that, on average, patients received 7.6 services from their GP throughout the year.
The General Practice: Health of the Nation report provides insights into the state of general practice in Australia, including patient access to care, GP job satisfaction, workforce information and emerging health issues. The report uses robust Health of the Nation survey data, as well as point-in-time data and government and stakeholder statistics. Each year, the report has a topic of interest. This year the topic of interest is innovation in general practice – barriers and enablers. The report explores the attitudes and beliefs of GPs towards innovation in general practice, as well as investigating the barriers and enablers of innovation in general practice identified by GPs.
Since the first Health of the Nation survey in 2017, GPs have consistently reported the most common health issues they manage are mental health related. This is consistent in the 2024 report, which tells us 71% of GPs report psychological issues in their top three reasons for presentations. This year, GPs are spending more time with their patients and the majority of patients report they can access timely general practice care.
The cost of care continues to increase in 2024. Patients are paying a larger share of the true cost of their medical visits, putting a greater financial burden on households, as indexation of Medicare rebates has not kept up with the cost of inflation. However, costs for GP services have continued to be lower than non-GP specialists and all services delivered under Medicare. The proportion of GPs bulk billing most of their patients has increased, most likely influenced by the tripling of the bulk-billing incentives for care provided for Commonwealth concession card holders and children under 16 years of age in November 2023. However, the proportion of fully bulk billed patients remains low, as GPs face significant challenges with the rising cost of providing care and financial viability concerns.
GPs are reporting marginally improved job satisfaction in the last year. Encouragingly, 73% of GPs state they are satisfied with their job, an increase from 66% in 2023. However, GP job satisfaction and wellbeing is dependent upon practice setting and age. GPs who work within Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) or an Aboriginal health setting report much higher job satisfaction than their counterparts. Younger practising GPs (those under 35 years of age) had the overall highest job satisfaction rate, as well as GPs who were over 65 years of age. Overwhelmingly, GPs indicated they do not feel valued when ranking issues they face within general practice. Role encroachment by other health professionals is increasingly being noted as an issue that GPs face.
Although still at high levels, burnout is slowly decreasing, with 69% of GPs experiencing burnout in 2024, compared with 73% in 2022. The proportion of GPs who reported being dissatisfied with the amount of administration associated with their work increased markedly, from 60% in 2023, to 70% in 2024. GPs have continued to raise concerns about the heavy administrative burden on general practice.
The GP workforce is ageing, with the proportion of GPs aged 65 years and older steadily increasing. The share of new GPs under 35 has also declined, notably among female GPs. Almost one third of current GPs plan to cease practising within the next five years. Half of these GPs indicated they would be stopping practice earlier than they’d intended when they first commenced general practice. These results indicate a risk to the size of the practising GP workforce in the short term if these GPs follow through with their intentions. There are several factors that would encourage current GPs to practice longer, and these are largely centred around addressing the challenges facing the profession. Eighty-one per cent of GPs identified that improved remuneration, incentives and conditions would encourage them to practice longer.
There has been a moderate increase in the proportion of GPs recommending general practice as a career to future doctors. This has increased from 38% in 2023, to 44% in 2024. While this increase is encouraging, it is still not at 2021 levels, when 58% of GPs were prepared to recommend the profession to future doctors. We continue to see a repeated decline in medical students’ preference to specialise in general practice. In 2023, only 10.5% of medical students reported general practice as their preferred specialty of future practice, contrasting with 13% in 2022, and 13.6% in 2021.
Most GPs do not feel well informed about innovation within general practice, and a large proportion are not adopting innovative tools and technologies and are not familiar with a wide range of these tools, such as artificial intelligence. Despite a lack of familiarity and implementation of innovative tools and practices, a large proportion of GPs are demonstrating a positive mindset towards the broader adoption of innovation within general practice. Nearly half of GPs feel enthusiastic when adopting new digital technologies within general practice and believe that innovations occurring in general practice are generally positive and improve patient outcomes. Most GPs identified a lack of time as the biggest barrier to innovation within their practice setting, followed by a lack of government incentives and funding.