Practice nurse involvement in primary care depression management: an observational cost-effectiveness analysis

BMC Primary Care

Table 1 Practice, GP and practice nurse characteristics by model of care

	Low level model	High level model	p value
Practice characteristics (mean)
Number of practices in model	6	3
Number of GPs	6.00	2.67	0.11
Total number of patients with depression	398.83	235.00	0.47
GP age (years)	45.70	46.11	0.94
GP experience (years)	19.04	20.89	0.77
GP gender (proportion male)	0.70	0.72	0.93
Number of depression-related training sessions attended by GPs in last 2 years	1.69	2.11	0.42
Practices bulk bill¹ (proportion):
all patients	0.50	1.00
concession/pension card patients only	0.50	0.00	0.13
Billing of Medicare mental health item numbers (items per patient year)²	0.37	0.34	0.78
Practice nurse (PN) characteristics (mean per practice)
Number of PNs in model	13	3
Number FTE³ PNs per GP	0.24	0.27	0.70
PN age (years)	49.92	46.33	0.40
Experience working as a PN (years)	6.20	9.17	0.55
Experience working as a PN in the participating practice (years)	5.13	3.50	0.68
Number of depression-related training sessions attended by PNs in last 2 years	0.38	1.33	0.04
Billing of Medicare item number 10997 (items per patient year)⁴	0.08	0.06	0.64

¹The Medicare benefit paid for the visit is accepted as the full fee, therefore there is no out of pocket expense for the patient. ²Included mental health item numbers cover preparation of a GP mental health care plan by a medical practitioner (2702, 2710), and review of a GP Mental Health Treatment plan (2712). ³FTE: full time equivalent. ⁴Item number 10997 covers ‘provision of monitoring and support to people with a chronic disease by a practice nurse or registered Aboriginal Health Worker on behalf of a GP’.

ISSN: 2731-4553