Older Australia at a glance (AIHW)

Older Australia at a glance

* Older Australians are generally living healthier and longer than previous generations.

* Older Australia at a glance is a series of web-based snapshots providing insight into who they are, where they are living, how they are changing, how healthy they are and the services they are using.

* Each snapshot provides succinct information supported by figures and tables, with new snapshots to be released annually.

* The series will paint a picture reflecting the complexity and diversity of the older Australian population.

View web page: Older Australia at a glance.

Medical practitioner workforce 2015 (AIHW)

Medical practitioner workforce 2015 examines trends in demographic and employment characteristics of medical practitioners who were registered in Australia in the ten years up to 2015.

* The total number of registered medical practitioners increased from 67,890 in 2005 to 97,466 in 2015.

* The majority of these (83,871) were practitioners employed as clinicians.

* This report shows the supply of general practitioners (GPs) changed little between 2005 and 2015, ranging from 109 per 100,000 people in 2008 to 114 in 2015.

* There has also been no increase in the supply of hospital non-specialists over the past 5 years.

* In contrast, the supply of non-GP specialists increased from 121 to 143 per 100,000 people between 2005 and 2015 and the supply of specialists-in-training increased from 43.4 to 74.8 per 100,000 people.

* This suggests that while the supply of GPs and non-specialists is keeping pace with population growth, the number of medical practitioners working in, or training to take on, roles in other specialties is growing faster.

Media release: Doctor workforce increasingly specialised-and more female clinician specialists and GPs

View web page: Medical practitioner workforce 2015.

Diabetes Standards and Guidelines

The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published new (or updated) guidelines and quality standards. The latest updates are:

* NICE Guideline NG17 Type 1 diabetes in adults: diagnosis and management.

* NICE Guideline NG28 Type 2 diabetes in adults: management.

* NICE Quality Standard QS125 Diabetes in children and young people

Aussie Men Say #ItsOkayToTalk, Changing The Conversation Around Suicide

Thousands of Aussie men are getting on board a social media campaign raising awareness for suicide prevention and changing the conversation around mental health.


The #ItsOkayToTalk campaign began with a UK rugby player, Luke Ambler, deciding to take the conversation (or lack of conversation) around mental health into his own hands after his brother-in-law Andy Roberts took his own life very suddenly.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/08/17/aussie-men-say-itsokaytotalk-changing-the-conversation-around/

Progress in world’s first Alzheimer’s vaccine

With more than 7.5 million new cases of Alzheimer’s disease a year, the race to find a vaccine and effective treatment for dementia is growing by the day. Researchers in the US and Australia have make a breakthrough discovery in the international quest to discover a new and potentially effective vaccine targeting the pathological proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia in the elderly.

In research findings just released in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal, Flinders University experts as part of a high-level US research team at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM) and University of California, Irvine (UCI) have made a successful vaccine formulation that targets the abnormal beta-amyloid and tau proteins that signal Alzheimer’s disease.

Read more at: http://www.myvmc.com/news/progress-in-worlds-first-alzheimers-vaccine/

Western NSW rate of smoking much higher than the state

The Western NSW Local Health District is trying to save more than 24,000 smokers from an early death.It reports that 18.2 per cent of residents living within its boundaries are smoking, compared with the state rate of 13.5 per cent.

The health district’s acting director of population health Priscilla Stanley attests to progress in reducing the rate of smoking, but she and colleagues remained focused on those who are yet to quit the deadly habit.“There are over 48,000 smokers across Western NSW,” she said. "More than half of this number will die early as a direct result of smoking.”

The health district recently launched a long-term strategic plan to save more lives.

See more at: http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/4098948/24000-face-an-early-death/?cs=112

Impacts of chronic back problems (AIHW)

Chronic back problems are common conditions in Australia (16% of the total population) and cause of disability (28% of the total population with disability) in Australia.

Chronic back problems can have a strong negative effect on a person's quality of life, affecting their ability to participate in daily activities, work, family and social activities.

This bulletin provides the latest detailed information on the impacts (in terms of quality of life and disability) of chronic back problems in Australia.

Media release: '1 in 6 Australians have chronic back problems'

Download report: Impacts of chronic back problems

Men And Their Sheds photo book explores importance of the man cave

A new photo book documents how spending time in their backyard sheds can help men with their mental health. Photographer Craig Wetjen said creating the book, Men And Their Sheds, had helped him with his own depression and anxiety.

"Men just love to tinker," he told 774 ABC Melbourne's Clare Bowditch.
"I really tried to tap into the whole aspect of mental health and physical health and what the shed can actually mean to them.

Read more at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-16/men-and-their-sheds-book-launch-mental-health/7747382

Hospital care for Aboriginal people

A report on Aboriginal people's perceptions of the NSW hospital system by the NSW Bureau of Health Information has shown a gulf between their experiences and those of non-Aboriginal people in several key measures, which were more pronounced in rural hospitals.

Aboriginal patients were particularly lukewarm on the quality of their communications with clinical staff, whether they had enough privacy when discussing their treatment and whether appropriate arrangements were made for their discharge. However, there was little difference between them and non-Aboriginal patients in the way that they rated the physical environment and comfort, safety and hygiene.

The responses of 2682 Aboriginal patients to the Bureau's annual survey of admitted patients for 2014 comprise this report. Individual reports are also available for Western NSW and other local health districts.

Reports page

Aboriginal patients have different experience of hospital, especially in country (Dubbo Liberal)

Diabetes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Published recently by The Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet is a comprehensive Review of diabetes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The review is aimed at informing people involved in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care and to provide evidence for policy makers.

There have been varying reports about the extent of this problem, but in 2012-2013, national estimates of the prevalence of diabetes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people ranged from 9% (based on self-reported data) to 11% (based on biomedical data). "After age-adjustment, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were more than 3 times as likely as non-Indigenous people to have diabetes." In addition, hospitalisation rates for complications of type 2 diabetes were almost six times higher than for non-Indigenous people.

As well as looking at the data for prevalence and complications, the review puts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diabetes into context, discusses current prevention and management programs and policies and suggests future directions.

Indigenous health education for health professionals

Indigenous education for health professionals, a site by the Department of Human Services offers Indigenous health education resources about our health program payments and services to help improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians' health outcomes. It includes links to eLearning program and Education guides. Subjects covered include Medicare, Chronic disease, Mental health and Telehealth.

Australia's hospitals 2014-15 [ 3 separate reports] (AIHW)

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released three new Australia's hospitals 2014-15 reports (plus an online report) :

Australia's hospitals 2014-15 at a glance

* Australia's hospitals 2014-15 at a glance provides summary information on Australia's public and private hospitals.
* In 2014-15, there were 10.2 million hospitalisations, including 2.5 million involving surgery.
* Public hospitals provided care for 7.4 million presentations to emergency departments, with 74% of patients seen within recommended times for their triage category and about 73% completed within 4 hours.
* This publication is a companion to the 2014-15 Australian hospital statistics suite of publications.

Hospital resources 2014-15: Australian hospital statistics

* Hospital resources 2014-15: Australian hospital statistics presents a detailed overview of public and private hospital resources in Australia.
* In 2014-15, there were: 698 public hospitals; with over 60,300 beds, and accounting for more than $57 billion of recurrent expenditure (including depreciation); 624 private hospitals: with almost 3,000 beds, and accounting for more than $12 billion of expenditure.

Non-admitted patient care 2014-15: Australian hospital statistics

* In 2014-15, about 34.9 million non-admitted patient service events were provided by Australia's public hospitals.
* About 46% of non-admitted patient service events occurred in Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist clinics, 30% were in Medical consultation clinics, 13% in Procedural clinics and 10% in stand-alone diagnostic clinics.

View web page: Australia's hospitals 2014-15 at a glance-ONLINE REPORT

Media release: 'Bed numbers rising more in private hospitals than public hospitals