This report highlights changes in general practice activity in Australia over the most recent decade (April 2004 to March 2014) of the BEACH program, a continuous national cross-sectional study of general practice activity. Over this time 9,731 general practitioners (GPs) provided details of 973,100 GP-patient encounters. The report highlights changes that have occurred over the decade in the characteristics of GPs and the patients they see, the problems managed, and the treatments provided. Changes in prevalence of overweight and obesity, smoking status and alcohol use are also described for subsamples of more than 30,000 adult patients each year. This report is a companion to the annual report, General practice activity in Australia 2012-13.
This book provides a summary of results from the 17th year of the BEACH program, a continuous national study of general practice activity in Australia.
Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.
Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.
This report highlights changes in general practice activity over the most recent decade (April 2005 to March 2015) measured by the University of Sydney's BEACH program, a continuous study of general practice activity in Australia.
Performance measurement is now a key management tool used by government to assess and enhance public services. It is also used as a tool for public sector transparency and accountability. Despite these noble objectives, performance measurement can also generate counterproductive and sometimes paradoxical outcomes. This book innovatively conceptualises performance measurement as a ‘policy instrument’. Such an approach necessarily invites careful and critical examination of instances of the formation, application and contestation of particular performance measurement regimes, the tools used to measure performance, the way in which performance data is produced and used, and the complex dynamics between professionals, managers and service users that arise from these practices. The book provides detailed empirical examples of performance measurement in the delivery of health, schooling and child welfare services, as well as the problematics of assessing national wellbeing. Instead of a form of scientific and rational management, performance measurement is revealed as an intrinsically contested, socio-politically charged and value laden practice. The book concludes that to succeed in delivering authentic performance improvements public sector managers must be aware of these complex, paradoxical dynamics and the circumstances that make performance measurement perform. This book was originally published as a special issue of Policy Studies.
This report highlights changes in general practice activity over the decade from April 2006 to March 2016 measured by the University of Sydney's BEACH program, a continuous study of general practice activity in Australia. The BEACH program closed in 2016, after 18 years of continuous data collection. Over the decade, 9,721 general practitioners (GPs) provided details of 972,100 GP-patient encounters. The report highlights changes in the characteristics of GPs and the patients they see, the problems managed and the treatments provided. Changes in prevalence of measured risk factors (overweight, obesity, smoking and at-risk alcohol use) are described for sub-samples of more than 30,000 adult patients each year. Changes in the prevalence of overweight and obesity over the decade are also described for annual sub-samples of more than 2,500 children aged 2-17 years. This report is a companion to the annual report General Practice Activity in Australia 2015-16.
