Potentially avoidable general practitioner (GP)-type presentations are defined as presentations to public hospital emergency departments with a Type of visit of Emergency presentation where the patient:

• was allocated a Triage category of 4 or 5 and
• did not arrive by ambulance or police or correctional vehicle and
• was not admitted to the hospital, not referred to another hospital, or did not die.

Limited to public hospitals in Peer Groups A and B.

To ensure comparability over time, emergency department activity at the Mersey Community Hospital is reported with Peer Group B hospitals for National Healthcare Agreement purposes. Whilst it is currently not a Peer Group A or B hospital, in the baseline year (2007-08) Mersey was a campus of the Peer Group B North West Regional Hospital and its emergency department activity was included in the baseline.

Analysis by state and territory, remoteness and Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socioeconomic Disadvantage (IRSD) is based on usual residence of person.

Presented as a number.

Nationally by Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socioeconomic Disadvantage (IRSD) deciles (not reported this cycle).

2012–13 (updated for peer group), 2013–14—State and territory.

State and territory, by (all not reported this cycle):

• Indigenous status
• remoteness (Australian Standard Geographical Classification Remoteness Structure)
• SEIFA IRSD quintiles
• peer group and triage category

Some disaggregations may result in numbers too small for publication.

Disaggregation by peer group is limited to Peer Groups A and B, as this is the scope of the collection, and coverage varies for other hospitals by state and territory.

Most recent data available for 2015 National Healthcare Agreement (NHA) performance reporting: 2013–14.

This definition of ‘potentially avoidable GP-type presentation’ was used in the Booz Allen Hamilton study of emergency department care in NSW, and is considered to be a reasonable starting approximation of the population that should be receiving service in the primary care sector.

Indicator specification under review by the NHISSC Emergency Data Development Working Group (EDDWG).