General practice activity in Australia 2007-08

This publication is the 22nd in the General practice series produced by the Australian General Practice Statistics and Classification Centre, a collaborating unit of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the University of Sydney. It reports the results of the tenth year of the BEACH program, April 2007 to March 2008. Data reported by 953 general practitioners on 95,300 GP-patient encounters are used to describe aspects of general practice in Australia: the general practitioners and their patients; the problems managed and the treatments provided. The contribution of practice nurses to the GP-patient encounters in terms of their clinical activities, the problems they assist with and the Medicare items claimed, are described in this report. Information on body weight to height ratio, smoking status and alcohol use for a subsample of patients is also provided. This paper is by Helena Britt, Graeme C Miller, Janice Charles, Joan Henderson, Clare Bayram, Christopher Harrison, Lisa Valenti, Salma Fahridin, Ying Pan, Julie O’Hallora