Public Perceptions of Australia's Doctors, Hospitals and Health Care Systems

Dr Elizabeth Hardie and Dr Christine Critchley, both senior lecturers in psychology at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, assessed public perceptions of Australia's doctors, hospitals and health care systems.

Eight hundred Australian adults participated in the national phone survey mid last year. Results showed that GPs were deemed more trustworthy than specialists or hospitals. The sample as a whole had fairly low trust in non-traditional practitioners. However, these alternative practitioners were trusted more by women than by men.

Dr Hardie said the respondents also endorsed the current health care system, and had fairly weak "pro-private" attitudes and strong "pro-public" attitudes. The study found that people did not endorse an individual user-pays private health system but were strongly in favour of a universal public health system that is collectively funded by the public purse.

"The sample had greater trust in private compared with public hospitals, but greater trust in public (Medicare) than private (health insurers) systems," she said.

"This may reflect Australians' historical support for a public health care system, combined with an awareness of the long waiting lists and strained resources currently experienced by Australia's public hospitals".

In a separate research paper in the latest Medical Journal of Australia, Maria Potiriadis, from the Department of General Practice at the University of Melbourne, and her co-authors looked into how Australian patients rated their general practitioner.

Using the General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ), the researchers found that the majority of the 7,130 Victorian patients who took part in the survey reported high levels of satisfaction.

Patients who expressed greater satisfaction with their care tended to be older, to rate their health more highly, to visit their GP more frequently, and to see the same GP each time.

Ms Potiriadis said the GPAQ was a relatively new tool but would eventually enable comparisons of general practice care across time, between practices and between patient subgroups.

The study showed that on a scale of 0 to 100, respondents rated access to their local medical practice 68.6 and communication between themselves and their GP was rated 84.

"Compared with national benchmarks in the United Kingdom, the GPs and practices participating in our study were rated higher on all six GPAQ items," Ms Potiriadis said. However, the observed differences in GPAQ scores between the two countries are likely to be mainly the result of the sampling methods used.

"Higher scores in our sample may be partially attributable to differences in the organisation of general practice: while Australians are free to consult any GP for their own health care, UK patients who consult GPs under the National Health Service are allocated to a GP based on postcode of residence and catchment area of the general practice," she said.

CONTACT: Dr Elizabeth Hardie (on request only)

Ms Maria Potiriadis 03 9314 3252 or 0421 524 541

Kylie Butler (AMA) 02 6270 5466 or 0417 652 488