Health care professionals working harder than ever
General practitioners (GPs) are working harder, treating more chronic conditions, ordering more pathology tests, and seeing more elderly patients than they were a decade ago, according to new research published yesterday by the University of Sydney.
A greater part of the GP workload involves managing older patients with multiple chronic conditions, a new report reveals.
“Patients are having longer, more complicated consultations now than a decade ago,” says Associate Professor Helena Britt, director of the BEACH program at University of Sydney.
The findings reveal GPs today manage 158 problems for every 100 patient encounters, which has risen from 145 problems 10 years ago. Most Australians (85%) saw a GP in the last year. These people had an average of seven consultations in that period.
Two reports published from the Family Medicine Research Centre at the University explore the activities of Australian GPs and the care of their patients in 'General practice activity in Australia 2013-14', and 'A decade of Australian general practice 2004-05 to 2013-14'.
The data comes from the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) program, which continuously collects information about clinical activities of GPs in Australia.
Dr Liz Marles, a general practitioner and past president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) says: “This new data highlights the increasingly complex work that GPs do. In any given visit, a GP is dealing with multiple complex problems and treating more chronic conditions than ever before.
“GPs are most people's first port of call for their health problems. They deal with everything from health checks, immunisations, coughs and colds and mild illnesses, to long term chronic disease management and palliative care of the dying,” Dr Marles says.
“As the life expectancy of Australians continues to rise, people are living longer with disease. Therefore, a greater part of the GP workload involves managing older patients with multiple chronic conditions,” she adds.
In 2013-14, older patients accounted for about a third of the GPs clinical workload. In the past decade this has increased from 26.5 per cent of GPs' caseload to 32.5 per cent today. In particular, there has been a doubling in the number of patients aged over 85 years, she says.
“GPs are also spending more time looking after conditions related to increased weight and an ageing population.
“The increasing incidence of overweight and obesity (now at 63 per cent of adults) may be linked with the rise in consultations for depression, diabetes, and reflux. High blood pressure, which is also related to age and obesity, is the most common chronic problem managed by GPs.
“Being a GP is now a more complicated area of medicine due to people having multiple illnesses. Consultations nowadays are rarely quick simple – in fact only three per cent of GPs' consulting time requires brief consultations of six minutes or less.”
