Variation between divisions of general practice in the uptake of health assessments, care plans and case conferences through the Enhanced Primary Care program

Abstract

We aimed to describe the variation in rates of uptake of the enhanced primary care (EPC) Medicare Benefits Schedule items for health assessments (HA), care plans (CP) and case conferences (CC), between Divisions of General Practice from November 1999 (when these items first became available) to October 2001.There was substantial variation in uptake of the various EPC services between Divisions of General Practice, ranging from very low to high. For HA the rate in the highest uptake Division was 496 per 1000 eligible population, and the lowest was zero. There are seven Divisions with high and six with very low uptake, with the rest ranging between 100 and 400/1000.Five Divisions had CP rates over 15/1000 total population; most Divisions had fewer than 10/1000,and many had less than 5/1000.A similar pattern is observed for CC. The levels of uptake for HA increased in the second year of the program for all but eight Divisions of General Practice, and the levels of uptake for CP increased in all but two Divisions. In the first two years of availability, uptake has been highly variable across Divisions of General Practice. Uptake has however increased substantially and consistently in the second year of the program.