4839.0.55.001 - Health Services: Patient Experiences in Australia, 2009

ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 20/10/2011

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Contents >> Barriers to health services >> Barriers to health care

BARRIERS TO HEALTH CARE

To measure barriers to accessing health services, all people aged 15 years and over in the survey were asked whether they had delayed seeing or not seen a GP at any time in the past year because of the cost, and whether they had delayed having or not had a pathology or imaging test at any time in the past year because of the cost. People were also asked whether in the past year they had:

experienced unacceptable waiting times for an appointment with a GP for urgent medical care;
travelled longer than an hour to see a GP; and
needed any health service in the past year that they had not been able to access.

People who had been referred to a specialist by a GP were asked whether they had delayed seeing or not seen a specialist at any time in the past year because of the cost, and whether they felt the waiting time for their most recent specialist appointment was unacceptable ¹.

People who had been prescribed medication by a GP were asked whether they delayed getting or did not get prescribed medication at any time in the last year because of the cost.

1. People who had been interviewed by proxy were not asked questions that called for personal opinions. <back