A recent survey by Roy Morgan shows that General Practitioners are very well appreciated. Australians were asked to rate the importance of General Practice to the health care system on a scale of 1 to 10, where a rating of 10 is very important and a rating of zero is not important, and the survey showed that 62% of people rate GP’s a 10 and just 0.1% of the people rate GP’s as a zero.
It is reasonable to consider a rating of 9 or 10 as being in agreement that General Practice is very important, a rating of 7 or 8 as undecided, and a rating of 6 or less as not that important. On this basis (and a bit like a Net Promotor Score), 80% think General Practice is very important and 4% think is is not important.
Over 75% of Australians surveyed are loyal to their GP. Bulk Billing (or no cost care) is still the most popular with the public, but not by a big margin. That is 42% of Australians surveyed report that they are loyal to their bulk billing GP (and practice) and 33% are loyal to their private billing GP (and practice).
Twelve percent of Australians say they have a preferred practice and a second GP practice they attend for “easier things”, such as repeat scripts and medical certificates. The people that have a second practice were split about 50/50 between those whose primary practice is private billing and those whose primary practice is bulk billing. So it appears that convenience rather than avoiding private fees is the main driver to use a second practice.
About 9% of Australians have no preferred GP and will attend a GP that is convenient at the time. Of the 9% looking for convenience, 57% of them are looking for a bulk billing GP, 13% say they prefer a private billing GP and 30% say the type of billing is not a factor in their decision.
The final 4% say they have not seen a GP in the last few years, or prefer another type of health provider.
Please note that this article uses raw survey data and the final results may differ slightly when population weightings are applied.
Great insights Hamish! Very interesting. Take home for me is privae billing and improved access are oportunities for GPs!