4839.0.55.001 - Health Services: Patient Experiences in Australia, 2009  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 20/10/2011   
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Contents >> General practitioners and medical specialists >> Time between making appointment and seeing a GP for urgent medical care

TIME BETWEEN MAKING APPOINTMENT AND SEEING A GP FOR URGENT MEDICAL CARE

For the most part, people who had seen a GP for urgent medical care in the past year reported seeing the GP within four hours of making an appointment (60% or 1.5 million people). A further 15% had seen the GP after four hours but on the same day, and 13% had seen the GP the next day; but 12% (293,800 people) had not seen a GP until two or more days after making an appointment for urgent medical care.

People who rated their health as good or better were actually more likely to see a GP for urgent medical care more quickly than people who rated their health as fair or poor (62% seeing a GP within four hours, compared with 54% of people who rated their health as fair or poor).

People in WA were less likely to see a GP for urgent medical care within 4 hours than people in NSW, Victoria or Queensland, but differences between other states and other times were not statistically significant (see Technical Note). People in major cities were more likely than people in regional and remote Australia to have seen a GP for urgent medical care within four hours.







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