The latest Productivity Commission data shows that patient visit numbers and funding are steadily rising.
Australians are visiting the GP more frequently than in previous years, but frustration over wait times is brewing.
According to the latest Productivity Commission report on government services, patients received an average of 6.6 GP services per person in the final pre-pandemic year.
By the 2021-22 financial year, it was 7.6 visits per person.
In the 2015-16 financial year – as far back as the data goes on this metric – people received an average of 6.4 GP services in a year. It remained steady around that figure until the 2020-21 financial year, when it jumped to 7.
Government per-person contributions to the sector have also slowly but surely grown over the last decade.
In 2012-13, the Commonwealth spent $372 per person per year on general practice.
In the years following, it quickly jumped to about $408 before slowing in growth. In the financial year that the pandemic kicked off, the government contributed around $422 per person.
The rise to $445 in 2020-21 was the biggest jump in expenditure over the whole decade and is potentially tied to the beginning of the covid-19 vaccine rollout, which occurred in the second half of that period.
In the following financial year, 2021-22, the government spending per person reduced slightly to $444, despite the uptick in presentations per patient. This is averaged over the country; in NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory expenditure per person grew in 2021-22, while it slumped slightly in the other states and territories.
“The decline in per head expenditure shows just how much pressure GPs are under and the reality that they have been asked to do more for less by successive governments, including inadequate funding for telehealth services,” AMA vice president Dr Danielle McMullen told The Medical Republic.
“This comes at the same time as practice costs have increased at an accelerating rate, so it is little wonder that patients are facing greater out of pocket costs and finding it harder to see a GP – reinforcing the need for a May budget that delivers real and meaningful support for general practice.”
In-person visits briefly shrank to an average of 5.5 per person in 2020-21, but had rebounded to six by 2021-22.
Essentially, when in-person presentations flagged, telehealth went strong.
Even now that in-person visits have rebounded, roughly the same number of people still choose to use telehealth.
In terms of affordability, the commission reported a slight increase in the number of Australian Bureau of Statistics patient experience survey respondents who had delayed seeing a GP in the previous 12 months due to cost, from 2.4% in 2020-21 to 3.5% in 2021-22.
This is still lower than the years immediately preceding the pandemic, when the number of people who said they had delayed seeing a GP due to cost tended to sit around 5%.
Wait times, meanwhile, have gotten steadily worse over the decade, with roughly one in two people waiting more than four hours for urgent care with a GP.
Overall, about a quarter of ABS survey respondents felt they had waited longer than was acceptable to get a GP appointment.
This story was updated on 07/02/23 with AMA comment
