Australia was one of the top five performers in the world when it comes to the quality of care, co-ordination of care, person-centred care and physical health.
The findings were part of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s inaugural Patient-Reported Indicator Surveys.
The Paris-based body collected data from 107,000 patients and 1800 primary care practices across 19 countries, including Australia.
Achieving such high satisfaction in the personal care provided by GPs showed a world-class health system at work, Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care clinical director Liz Marles said.
Australia performed better than or close to the OECD average across all 10 areas measured in the survey.
Dr Marles pointed to how 97 per cent of Australian patients surveyed, who had a single GP for three to five years, rated their care positively, describing it as an “amazing result”.
“We know that where a person is able to establish a good relationship with a GP over the long term, they get much better outcomes and that leads to better trust in the system as a whole,” she said.
“If you see the same GP over a period of time, they get to know you as a person, get to know your preferences, understand your context and they know what’s going on in your life.”
Nearly 2400 Australian patients aged 45 years and above, suffering from at least one chronic condition and who visited a GP in the past six months, gave feedback on their experiences and health outcomes for the survey.
The most common chronic conditions reported included high blood pressure, arthritis or ongoing back and joint pain, depression, anxiety or other mental health issues, breathing and heart conditions.
When it came to mental health, patients seeing their GPs were less than positive, with Australia’s ranking dipping to 13th out of 19.
Dr Marles, a practising Sydney GP, said the other health measures of the survey where Australia could have performed better were still close to the OECD averages but that did not prevent GPs and policymakers from making care more accessible.
She pointed to geographical accessibility and financial considerations as presenting barriers to patients.
The burden of chronic disease across the country is high, with one in two Australians having at least one chronic condition.
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