MJA
MJA

General practice patients form an insignificant part of the emergency department workload

Yusuf Nagree, Andrew D Gosbell, Daniel M Fatovich, Peter A Cameron, Sally M McCarthy and David Mountain
Med J Aust 2012; 197 (11): . || doi: 10.5694/mja12.11571
Published online: 10 December 2012

To the Editor: The recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) statistics on emergency department (ED) care show that 38% of attendances from 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012 were potential general practice presentations.1 This indicator is reported under the National Healthcare Agreement. Both the AIHW and Council of Australian Governments acknowledge that this method is flawed and have agreed to review this indicator.2 To date, this has not been done.

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