Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on general practice consultations
Project Details
This project was commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Health to undertake a secondary data analysis to explore some of the potential impacts of COVID-19 on general practice, including ordering of radiology tests, pathology tests, diagnosis of long COVID and investigation of symptoms that may be suggestive of cancer. These will be used to help to inform policy.
Patron ID: PAT062
Project Lead:
A/Prof Jo-Anne Manski-Nankervis
Summary
This series of studies sheds light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on key areas of general practice, drawing on a dataset of over one million patients over three years.
Findings:
- As expected, face-to-face consultations were much more likely to be associated with relevant follow-up of cancer investigations.
- Requests for radiology and hepatitis B serology declined in 2020 compared to 2019.
- In 2020 there was a reduction in radiology and hepatitis B serology test referrals that was largely driven by a decline in the number of patients attending GP in 2020 compared to pre-pandemic attendances.
- To our knowledge, our study is the first to find a lower prevalence of post COVID-19 condition among general practice patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 than among patients infected in 2021.
- The findings are consistent with recent research from overseas showing the prevalence of post COVID-19 condition is lower if people were infected after receiving at least one vaccination.
Additional exploration into the diagnosis of post COVID-19 condition in the general practice setting is warranted.
Research Outcomes
Report to the Department of Health and Aged Care - "Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on general practice consultations, A suite of studies utilising the Patron database".
This report is not public.