In this episode of PodMD, NAB’s Head of Behavioural & Industry Economics Dean Pearson is here to discuss the third part of the NAB health special report.
To find out how healthy Australians are, NAB launched a three-part special report studying all aspects of Australians health and wellbeing. The research provides actionable data, providing tangible insights to help inform practice owners, as they balance the expectations of their patients now, and in the future.
- Transcript
Please note this is a machine generated transcription and may contain some errors.
*As always, all in this PODMD podcast is intended for health professionals and the comments are of a general nature. Information given is not intended as specific medical advice pertaining to any given patient. If you have a clinical issue with one of your patients please seek appropriate advice from a colleague with expertise in the area.
Today I’d like to welcome back to the PodMD studio Dean Pearson.
To find out how healthy Australians are, NAB launched a three-part special report studying all aspects of Australians health and wellbeing. The report provides actionable data, providing tangible insights to help inform practice owners, as they balance the expectations of their patients now and in the future.
In part 1 NAB asked a large representative sample of health patients across the country to tell them about their experiences with the health system, exploring issues such as wait times, access, affordability, and overall satisfaction with health professionals and the system. Part 2 explored how Australians viewed their own health, including their preventative behaviours and attitudes.
In part 3 NAB has explored some of the most important factors for health patients when searching for a health professional. The report also investigates whether patients perceptions over some key issues (including access to bulk billing, cost of health services, usage of telehealth, e-health, and data sharing) have changed over the past year.
Here to discuss part 3 is Dean Pearson, NAB’s Head of Behavioural & Industry Economics and author of the NAB Health special report.
Hello Dean, thanks for joining us today.
Question 1
So, what do health patients value most when selecting a trusted health professional?Dean: Hi and thanks for having me on the podcast. Well, in terms of what patient’s value despite heightened concerns over cost of living pressures, convenience really clearly still tops the wish list when Australians are selecting a health professional with six in ten selecting it as the most important factor. Rounding out the top three are bulk billing and ease of making an appointment. One in four also said that costs/out-of-pocket expenses and convenient hours were really important to them. Three in ten chose qualifications while recommendations from family and friends topped the list for about one in four health customers. Interestingly, only one in ten were influenced by positive patient or online reviews, and I’m sure that’s a very different result from what you would expect in the US, for example, and even fewer said they valued access to telemedicine or virtual visits.
Question 2
With convenience the top concern, is that influencing any other patient preferences?Dean: Yeah, it seems to be. For example, a growing number of patients are preferring GP’s who are part of an integrated medical hub. In fact over four in ten Australians indicated that their main GP was part of such a group. And it’s younger patients who are driving this trend with the numbers rising to six in ten for those aged between 18 to 24 who said they were part of an integrated medical hub.
Question 3
You also mentioned bulk billing as an important consideration for patients. Did the research look at how accessible patients believe bulk billing is today?Dean: Yes it did. Despite bulk billing featuring prominently amongst patient preferences there’s been a significant fall in availability. Only six in ten patients told us their most recent GP visit was bulk billed – this compares to seven in ten a year ago, and there was a notable fall of concern in the number of patients on lower incomes who were bulk billed (that’s down to 75% compared to 89% a year ago). And as you know, in recent years the government has really introduced a range of incentives to try and encourage GP’s to bulk bill. The most recent being the triple bulk billing incentives or triple bonus for short. Now they’ve been in place since November 2023 and under these incentive GP’s in metropolitan areas are paid $20.65 a bonus if they bulk bill concession card holders or children under 16 years. Now GPs in rural and remote areas are paid between $31.35 to $39.65 extra. These bonus payments are in addition to regular Medicare rebates GP’s receive. But the available data still suggests that this has not encouraged enough doctors, and there’s a significant city-country divide with far fewer patients in metro areas reporting being able to access bulk billing.
Question 4
No doubt demand for bulk billing is related to cost of living pressures. How do patients feel more generally about health costs?Dean: Yeah well, patients would strongly believe that health costs are rising across the board. For example, around six in ten Australians believe it’s become more expensive to see a dentist, chiropractor and osteopath, physiotherapist, pharmacy, psychologist or psychiatrist, and about one in ten GP and four in ten an optometrist.
Question 5
Interesting, so then more patients are cutting or cancelling their health spending due to cost of living pressures?Dean: Surprisingly, no. I think this is a really interesting finding in the report around one in two patients told us that they had made their health a much greater priority over the past year, and it looks like they’re putting their money where their mouths are with fewer cutting or cancelling their health spending due to cost of living pressures compared to last year. So for example, fewer than three in ten patients told us they’d switch to lower cost prescription items and medications. That’s down from almost four in ten a year ago. Fewer about one in five had cancelled or cut back on regular dental appointments, treatments and procedures, on regular medical appointments and on buying fresh fruit and vegetables.
Question 6
The report also looks at a number of other issues impacting the sector including telehealth. Are there any interesting trends you can comment on in this space?Dean: Well, I think so. I think for example, the number of Australians using telehealth has actually fallen, face to face is still clearly strongly favoured. For GPs for example, the uptake of telehealth was down to about 31% of appointments. It was 41% a year ago, while for specialists it fell to 5% compared to about 8% a year earlier. We know that face-to-face is really particularly preferred for General Medical checkups. About 70% of patients said they prefer face-to-face compared to just 7% for telehealth. In dental, it was about 68% versus 6%. For acute ailment 67% preferencing face to face versus 7% for telehealth. Amongst the elderly, 57% versus 8%. Mental health 54% versus 8% and appointments to see a child 51% strongly preferred face-to-face versus 6% for telehealth. For those that use telehealth, they rate it very highly and I think this is also really quite important, for example, of those that use telehealth to see their GP, a greater number of patients rated the overall experience better compared to a traditional visit. So it was 26% that said it was better versus 21%. And this was largely driven by better telehealth experiences for things such as wait times for appointments, ease of getting an appointment and cost. So I think in effect, those that use telehealth really like it. So a hybrid model still seems to be the best option.
Question 7
With pharmacies clearly keen to expand their scope of services, what did the research find in regard to patients acceptance of additional services being offered?Dean: Well, there are some areas where patients believe pharmacies should be able to expand their scope of practice. For example, one in two patients believe pharmacists should be able to renew prescriptions for ongoing treatment. Four in ten believe they should be authorised to provide emergency dispensing of medicines to prescribe and administer appropriate travel, health, vaccines and medicines, to diagnose and prescribe for minor ailments and illnesses and manage common conditions such as back pain and eczema and those sort of conditions.
Question 8
E-health has the potential to empower patients to take greater control of their health and wellbeing. What can you share about patient attitudes and behaviours in this space?Dean: Well, in terms of behaviours, about three in ten patients told us that they have used a mobile phone or tablet health app in the past 12 months now. That’s broadly unchanged from last year, while one in four said they had used a wearable technology device like a fitness tracker, for example, and that’s up a little bit from last year. And when we asked them to rate the extent that these technologies had improved their health or fitness, on average, consumers and patients scored them 7.1 points out of a possible 10. Importantly, Australians are much more comfortable sharing their personal data from technology or E-health management tools with some trusted professionals more than others. Patients remain most comfortable sharing their data with GP’s and specialists, and much less and even more so than last year, with technology companies.
Question 9
Finally, Dean, at-home diagnostic testing has also grown in usage particularly since the pandemic. Are we seeing an increase in patient comfort around their use?Dean: No we’re not, somewhat surprisingly it is falling. Almost four in ten Australians had purchased an at home health test over the past year, but the number of patients who scored their comfort levels very high, so on a one-to-ten scale scored at eight to ten, ranged from 36% for genetic tests to identify current or future health risks to 44% for sending stool samples to determine current or future health risks. Now that compares to about one in two Australians who scored their comfort levels very high for all at home diagnostic tests a year earlier. So it’s quite a change.
Concluding question
So, what are a couple of key messages to sum this up for our listeners?Dean: Well, first thing I think what emerges from the research is that it’s a pretty familiar list of patient preferences. But what I think might surprise some is the order in which clearly time poorest Australians continue to rank these with convenience still number one, despite cost of living pressures. And I think probably secondly, health press and professionals should really be encouraged that despite ongoing cost of living stresses, patients are prioritising their household budgets in favour of health.
Thankyou Dean, and I hope you all enjoy reading this report.
Having a deeper understanding of patient attitudes to their health and the system as a whole, can only help health professionals to be better equipped to understand, engage and most importantly, retain patients.
Dean: Thank you
