The prevalence of persistence and related health status: An analysis of persistently high healthcare costs in the short term and medium term.

Understanding whether high healthcare costs for individuals persist over time is critical for the development of policies that aim to reduce the prevalence of high cost patients. And while high healthcare costs will occur in any given year based on the prevalence of certain morbidities and acute conditions, a large random component of the distribution means that it is rarely the same people driving the bulk of healthcare expenditures. Using administrative data for over 250,000 Australian residents for the years between 2006 and 2011, we analyse the persistence of high annual healthcare costs.

Does patients' experience of general practice affect the use of emergency departments? Evidence from Australia.

AS Emergency Department (ED) attendances have been growing rapidly, various strategies have been employed in Australia to improve access to General Practitioner (GP) care, particularly after normal working hours, in order to reduce the demand for ED. However, there has been little attention paid to the quality of GP care and whether that influences ED attendances. This paper investigates whether ED use is affected by patients' experience of GP care, using the logit model to analyse data from a survey of Australian consumers (1758 individuals).

The Rise and Fall in Out-of-Pocket Costs in Australia: An Analysis of the Strengthening Medicare Reforms.

After a period of steady decline, out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for general practitioner (GP) consultations in Australia began increasing in the mid-1990s. Following the rising community concerns about the increasing costs, the Australian Government introduced the Strengthening Medicare reforms in 2004 and 2005, which included a targeted incentive for GPs to charge zero OOP costs for consultations provided to children and concession cardholders (older adults and the poor), as well as an increase in the reimbursement for all GP visits. This paper examines the impact of those reforms using longitudinal survey and administrative data from a large national sample of women.

Bleeding Hearts, Profiteers, or Both: Specialist Physician Fees in an Unregulated Market.

This study shows that, in an unregulated fee-setting environment, specialist physicians practise price discrimination on the basis of their patients' income status. Our results are consistent with profit maximisation behaviour by specialists. These findings are based on a large population survey that is linked to administrative medical claims records.

Community preferences in general practice: important factors for choosing a general practitioner.

Background: Understanding the important factors for choosing a general practitioner (GP) can inform the provision of consumer information and contribute to the design of primary care services.

Objective: To identify the factors considered important when choosing a GP and to explore subgroup differences.

Design: An online survey asked about the respondent's experience of GP care and included 36 questions on characteristics important to the choice of GP.