GRAMPIANS region residents have significantly less access to subsidised cardiac services than their metropolitan counterparts, despite heart disease being the number one killer in the Horsham municipality.
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New data from the Third Australian Atlas of Healthcare Variation was released on Tuesday. It details and examines the differences in health care use according to where people live within Australia.
The Atlas breaks down healthcare use in four clinical areas – paediatric and neonatal health, cardiac tests, thyroid investigations and treatments, and gastrointestinal investigations and treatments – by region and per 100,000 people. The Wimmera came under the Grampians region.
The number of Medicare Benefit Scheme subsided services for cardiac stress test and imaging that were available to for Grampians residents was 3337 per 100,000 people. This was significantly lower than the state average of 4268 and the national average of 4575.
The discrepancy between the number of MBS-subsidised services for stress echocardiography was even greater, with 764 services available per 100,000 people in the Grampians. This was compared to a state average of 1465 and a national average of 1491.
A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released in August revealed that 13.1 per cent of deaths between January 2012 and December 2016 in the Horsham Rural City area were caused by coronary heart disease.
It was a similar case in the Northern Grampians Shire where coronary heart disease was the number one killer causing 13.5 per cent of deaths.
Another area outlined in the Atlas was the overuse of prescribing antibiotics to children. The Atlas found that most current antibiotic use was inappropriate and was being prescribed for viral illnesses unnecessarily.
Between 2016-17, there were more than three million Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme prescriptions given as antibiotics to children. This represented 96,721 per 100,000 children aged nine and under.
However the Grampians rate was lower than the national average, with 83,187 children prescribed antibiotics per 100,000 people.
The Atlas found that antibiotics prescription rates were the highest for children aged zero to four years, and overall dispensing rates are triple those in some similar countries.
The Atlas Advisory Group chair Professor Anne Duggan said there were many reasons data discrepancies varied between regions.
“While some variation in health care use by area is expected given the needs of different populations, wide variations can be a sign that some people are getting health care that they don’t need while others may be missing out on the healthcare that they do need,” she said.
“The data and recommendations in this Atlas will be used by clinicians, consumers, policymakers, and researchers across Australia to deliver equally important improvements in health care.”
More information about the Atlas can be found here.
