People living outside major cities are less healthy, have access to fewer disability services

PEOPLE living outside major cities are less healthy, have access to fewer services and are more likely to have objects left inside them after surgery.

Ed: Studies in Canada have produced similar results

TORY SHEPHERD, HEALTH REPORTER
Adelaide Now
September 19, 2008 12:01am

An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report, Rural, regional and remote health: Indicators of health system performance, found “misadventures” were “significantly higher” in Australia’s regional and remote areas.

Misadventures are defined as including “incidents such as a foreign object accidentally left in the body, or failure in dosage during surgical and medical care”.

Rates of misadventure were up to 15 per cent higher outside metropolitan areas. There were 139 seriously adverse events in 2005-06, 20 of these in South Australia.

Report author Sally Bullock said the results should be interpreted with caution because it was possible reporting rates were better outside cities.

The report also found:

THE number of medical specialists and dentists declined with distance from the cities.

HOSPITAL admission rates were up to 55 per cent higher for people living remotely than for those in the city.

PEOPLE with disabilities were less likely to access disability support services.

“It just reaffirms a lot of the stuff we’ve known before and certainly remote people have difficulty accessing primary health care, so we do need to work out how we support them,” said Rural Doctors Association president Dr Peter Rischbieth.

He said he was optimistic about the State Government’s new Country Health Care Plan – due to be released soon.

“I’ve been on the task force and we’re in the process of recommendations going to the minister,” he said. “Those of us who’ve worked on the task force believe there have been good recommendations.”

Health Minister John Hill said the Government was “working with the country health task force on a strategy to ensure our country hospitals provide the safest care for country South Australians”.

“The Department of Health has also issued an alert to health workers, reminding them of protocols in regard to patient safety during surgery,” he said.