Outpatient consultant physician service usage in Australia by specialty and state and territory.

Conclusion Significant per-capita variation in consultant physician utilisation is occurring across Australia. Future studies should explore the variation in greater detail to discern whether workforce issues, access or economic barriers to care, or the possibility of over- or under-servicing in certain geographic areas is leading to this variation.What is known about the topic? There are nearly 11million initial and subsequent consultant physician consultations billed to Medicare per year, incurring nearly A$850million in Medicare benefits. Little attention has been paid to per-capita variation in rates of consultant physician service use across states and territories.What does this paper add? There is marked variation in per-capita consultant physician service use across different states and territories both within and between specialties.What are the implications for practitioners? Variation in service use may be due to limitations in the healthcare workforce, access or economic barriers, or systematic over- or under-servicing. The clinical appropriateness of repeated follow-up consultations is unclear. PMID: 29262984 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research