If you are a GP, you’ll be pleased to know that you cost the taxpayer $250 a year. A bargain, really.
What is that – five bucks a week? Probably less than most of us spend on coffee and newspapers. It’s also slightly less than what we as a country spend on prescriptions each year ($284 per person) and a whole lot less than the cost of hospital care of $1117 per person.
These figures are just a few of the amazing facts that can be found in the Productivity Commission’s report released last week.
According to the report, there are just over 25,500 GPs working in Australia, which translates into just over 18,000 full time equivalent GPs. The basic cost of these doctors in Medicare services is $5.1 billion, just a little less than the $5.5 billion cost of the PBS, which pays for an average of nine prescriptions per person a year. The cost of general practice is dwarfed by the $24 billion in government spending on public hospitals.
However, the $5 billion cost attributed to general practice doesn’t cover everything - pathology tests or imaging costs each cost about a further $1 billion per year – or roughly $50 per person.
The report also tells us that and 66% of practices are accredited and that almost 90% of GPs are vocationally registered – a figure that hasn’t changed since 2002.
The Productivity Commission report then goes in to great detail about what GPs actually do and whether they deliver value for money. And how do the bean counters measure the value of GPs? Well, with easily measurable outcomes such as childhood immunisation rates, levels of cervical screening, and hospitalisation rates for conditions such as diabetes and vaccine preventable diseases.
I suppose there is no way of putting a dollar value on the reassurance, advice or persuading someone to quit smoking.
Interestingly, there is one figure in the report which received little publicity – the usage of antibiotics for common colds. According to the report, the use of oral antibiotics for upper respiratory tract infections has basically remained unchanged since 2002. The source of these figures is: Department of Health and Ageing “unpublished data”.
If you are a GP, you’ll be pleased to know that you cost the taxpayer $250 a year. A bargain, really. 
