The Health of a Nation 2019 report recently released by the RACGP, focuses on a range of key areas including:
- the health of the profession
- patient access to general practice
- the varied and important services that GPs provide to communities
- challenges facing GPs and general practices now and into the future
Patients talk to their GP about mental health more than any other health issue.
We know that many people living with obesity have coexisting depression, anxiety or other mood disorders. Furthermore, weight stigma and bias further exacerbates the disease process and also individuals coming forward to access the medical treatment and support they need.
Australian GPs were asked to “rank the three top priority health policy issues that you think the Federal Government should focus on.” We can see that
- Mental health (42%) and
- adult or childhood obesity (30%) still remain high-priority clinical issues.
It comes as no surprise that people living with more than one illness have more medical appointments and medications to manage.
How to maintain wellbeing, try and prevent chronic disease and manage multimorbidity is a challenge GPs face every day.
The top three issues are linked by common difficulties experienced by GPs in providing care within the current system. Care for health issues such as obesity and mental health can be complex, and require more time to work through. Therefore, many GPs find it difficult to provide this care viably due to the structure of Medicare.
The Medicare model better supports shorter consultations for more straightforward health conditions, and essentially undervalues longer consultations that are required for complex issues.
I agree with RACGP President Harry Nespolon that “keeping a nation healthy is a near -Herculean task.” I too am hopeful that the Minister’s commitment to a 10-year plan* provides us with an opportunity to plan services, but this must be fully funded to enable Australians to benefit from it. “Ensuring all Australians, regardless of where they live, have equitable access to high-quality primary healthcare is a priority for the Australian Government and for the RACGP”.
