Although the national bulk-billing rate for GP attendances now stands at 84.6%, around 5 per cent of Australians say that financial pressures meant postponing or delaying seeking care. Moreover, 7.6 per cent of respondents delayed or did not purchase prescribed medicines due to cost.
Around 64 per cent of those who did visit one of the nation’s 33,275 GPs reported waiting less than four hours for urgent care, while 11.1 per cent waited up to 24 hours, and 25 per cent waited longer.
Overall, 20.8 per cent of people who saw a GP for any reason waited longer than they felt was acceptable to get an appointment.
The latest statistics on the across-the-board delivery of health care in Australia came in the Report of Government Services 2016, the 21st edition of the official comprehensive study of how government funding is used.
ROGS went on to report that nationally around 6,242 general practitioner-type services per 1,000 population were provided under DHS Medicare in 2014-15, with more services available in major cities and inner regional areas than in outer regional, remote and very remote areas in most jurisdictions.
Australian Government expenditure on general practice in Australia was $8.3 billion in 2014-15. Of this, $7.7 billion, or $328 per person, comprised fee-for-service expenditure. Nationally, there were around 2.8 million GP-type presentations to public hospital emergency departments in 2014-15.
Australian women are less well serviced by female GPs - 65.2 female GPs per 100, 000 females and 121.3 male GPs per 100 000 males.
While the figures on patient satisfaction show that GP patients rate their care experience highly, they are less happy than dental patients. This may relate to the longer duration of dental procedures, and the fact that in the main these entail out of pocket payments - the principle of the more you pay, the more you value it (dental care is not government subsidized, but often involves health fund recompense).
Nationally, 90.3 per cent respondents reported that GPs “always or often listened carefully to them”, 93.3 per cent said they showed respect, and 88.9 per cent felt they spent enough time with them.
Patient satisfaction with dental professional care was, respectively, 94.5 per cent, 95.7 per cent, and 95.7 per cent.
ROGS found that in 2014-15, fee-for-service expenditure by the Australian Government on general practice was $7. 7 billion, translating to a crude rate of $328 per person.
Total expenditure by all governments on primary and community health was around $29.0 billion in 2013-14.
Australian Government expenditure on the PBS was around $7.1 billion, or $299 per person, in 2014-15.
