Healthy Skepticism Library item: 12715

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Woodhead M.
How much are you worth?
6minutes.com.au 2008 Feb 4
http://www.6minutes.com.au/dirplus/images/6minutes/newspluspharma/4_02_2008.pdf

Full text:

If you are a GP, you’ll be pleased to know that you cost the taxpayer $250 a year.
A bargain, really. What is that – five bucks a week?
Probably less than most of us spend on coffee or newspapers.
It’s also slightly less than what we as a country spend on prescriptions each year ($284
per person) and a whole lot less than the cost of hospital care of $1117 per person.
These figures are just a few of the amazing facts that can be found in the Productivity
Commission’s report released last week.
According to the report, there are just over 25,500 GPs working in Australia, which
translates into just over 18,000 full time equivalent GPs. The basic cost of these doctors
in Medicare services is $5.1 billion, just a little less than the $5.5 billion cost of the PBS,
which pays for an average of nine prescriptions per person a year.
The cost of general practice is dwarfed by the $24 billion in government spending on public
hospitals.
However, the $5 billion cost attributed to general practice doesn’t cover everything – pathology tests or imaging costs each cost about a further $1 billion per year – or roughly
$50 per person.
The report also tells us that 66% of practices are accredited and that almost 90% of GPs
are vocationally registered – a figure that hasn’t changed since 2002.
The Productivity Commission report then goes in to great detail about what GPs actually
do and whether they deliver value for money. And how do the bean counters measure the
value of GPs? Well, with easily measurable outcomes such as childhood immunisation rates,
levels of cervical screening, and hospitalisation rates for conditions such as diabetes and
vaccine preventable diseases.
I suppose there is no way of putting a dollar value on reassurance, advice or
persuading someone to quit smoking.
Interestingly, there is one figure in the report which received little publicity – the usage of antibiotics for common colds. According to the report, the use of
oral antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections has basically remained unchanged
since 2002. The source of these figures is: Department of Health and Ageing “unpublished data”.
You can check out the full report here