{"id":1872,"date":"2017-08-08T09:37:32","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T08:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2017-11-01T16:15:35","modified_gmt":"2017-11-01T15:15:35","slug":"would-you-choose-difficulty-accessing-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/2017\/08\/08\/would-you-choose-difficulty-accessing-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you choose difficulty accessing health-care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hopefully you would answer no to the question “Would you choose difficulty accessing health-care?<\/em>” But that is the reality for Australians who live in the country. A recent survey<\/a> of country folk regarding their access to health care, mental health and preventative health was undertaken as part of a collaborative project<\/a> between the Royal Flying Doctor Service<\/a>, the National Farmers Federation<\/a>, and the Country Women’s Association of Australia (including Queensland<\/a>, my home state).<\/p>\n

In case you didn’t know, the majority of Australians (70.2%) live in major cities, but these major cities comprise just 0.3% of our land mass. Of our 23.5 million population, approximately 7 million live in remote and rural areas, with half of these living in remote or very remote areas of Australia. While Australia may be the beautiful Sunburnt Country<\/a>, the poem belies some uniquely-regional experiences, such as through prose including “for flood and fire and famine<\/em>” and “over the thirsty paddocks<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

So what does health-care look like, and live like, in these areas? The survey of 454 Australians living in remote and regional parts of Australia explored two key perspectives:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the three most important health issues impacting upon their community, and<\/li>\n
  2. the three areas in which funding is required to improve community health outcomes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Most important health issues:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. general health access (32.5% of participants), including access to general practitioners, medical specialists, hospitals, diagnostic tests, and allied health services;<\/li>\n
    2. mental health problems (12.2%); and<\/li>\n
    3. drug and alcohol problems (4.1%).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Other health issues include cancer and cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n

      Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most important health funding priorities reflect the most important health issues:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. general health access (32.2%);<\/li>\n
      2. mental health problems (14.6%); and<\/li>\n
      3. health prevention and promotion (8.6%).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Other funding priorities include cancer, aged car, and travel and accommodation support for Australians who need to travel outside of their community to access health-related services and support.<\/p>\n

        While attention has been drawn to the need for better access to health care, and funding has been invested, this report provides the uniquely-Aussie input so critically needed in these injury prevention efforts.<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Hopefully you would answer no to the question “Would you choose difficulty accessing health-care?” But that is the reality for Australians who live in the country. A recent survey of country folk regarding their access to health care, mental health and preventative health was undertaken as part of a collaborative project between the Royal Flying […]<\/p>\n

        Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2738,1574,2724,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocacy","category-offbeat","category-splinters-fragments","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/files\/2017\/08\/Map-of-Australia.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}