Access and cost preventing access to health services
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released the results of the first national Patient Experience Survey, examining health care for Australians in the last 12 months indicating that access and cost have prevented people from seeking medical attention.
Four out of five people aged 15 years and over had seen a general practitioner (GP) in the past year. Just under a fifth of these had seen a GP for urgent medical care. One in 18 people had seen a GP after hours.
Approximately three out of four people seeking urgent medical care reported seeing a GP on the same day they needed the care, mostly within four hours (75%). Just over one in ten people, however, did not see a GP until two or more days after making an appointment for urgent medical care.
Almost one in six people who had seen a GP reported that they had waited longer than they felt acceptable to get an appointment. One in five people, who were referred to a medical specialist, felt they had waited longer than was acceptable to get an appointment.
The survey found that some people delayed or did not get some types of medical care due to cost. For example:
- 1 in 16 people had delayed seeing or not seen a GP;
- nearly 1 in 10 people with a prescription had delayed getting or did not get their medication; and
- around 1 in 10 people referred to a medical specialist had delayed seeing or did not see the specialist.
Except for hospital admissions and emergency visits, women used health services more than men.
A quarter of the people that had visited an emergency department in the last year thought the care they had gone there for, could have been provided by a GP. This was also the case in over a third of households with children who had been taken to emergency.
About 1 in 20 people reported having medical care that caused a harmful side-effect. In a little over half of these cases, the event causing the harm had occurred at home. Slightly more than half of those who had experienced a harmful side-effect reported they had been informed that this might occur.
