GP Recruitment

Chronic disease, post-surgical recovery, and the case for daytime GP home visits

1 in 2 Australians has at least one chronic condition. $82 billion is spent treating chronic disease annually. Post-surgical discharge creates measurable readmission risk. This is the clinical case for daytime home visiting — backed by data. Sources at the end.

The chronic disease cohort

The Department of Health and Aged Care's 2025 report on chronic conditions notes that for 15 million Australians living with a chronic health condition, findings from the landmark OECD PaRIS survey offer critical insights on improving primary care. Chronic conditions create a patient who needs their GP more often, faces compounded access barriers, and whose health outcomes depend significantly on the quality and continuity of their primary care relationship.

AIHW's 2024 chronic conditions analysis shows that the use of Medicare-subsidised GP services per person is increasing, driven in part by the growing chronic disease burden. Patients with chronic conditions see GPs more frequently than the general population — and the ABS Patient Experiences Survey 2024-25 shows that people with a long-term health condition are more likely to report waiting longer than acceptable for a GP appointment (28.7% compared to 22.2% for those without a long-term condition).

That finding is important. The patients who need GP care most frequently are the ones waiting longest to access it. And for patients whose chronic condition makes clinic attendance physically demanding — those with COPD, heart failure, advanced diabetes, severe mobility limitations — the wait is compounded by the effort of getting there.

The preventable hospitalisation burden

Health Services Daily reports that 778,000 hospital admissions in 2024 — representing 6.2% of all hospital admissions in Australia — were classified as potentially preventable. Of these, approximately 44% were due to chronic conditions, costing $3.5 billion in 2024. Regular, consistent GP monitoring of chronic disease patients reduces preventable hospitalisation. A daytime home visit model makes that monitoring accessible to patients whose conditions make clinic attendance genuinely difficult.

The post-surgical discharge gap

Post-surgical patients discharged home face a gap between hospital discharge and stable community GP care. They are often not mobile enough to attend a clinic for follow-up, not stable enough to be left unmonitored, and not well served by telehealth alone when physical assessment — wound inspection, mobility assessment, cardiovascular monitoring — is clinically necessary. The daytime home visit fills this gap directly: a qualified GP provides the post-surgical follow-up in the patient's home, reduces readmission risk, and provides the patient and their family with the clinical oversight they need during a vulnerable recovery period.

What this means for GPs on C.A.L.L.S

Chronic disease and post-surgical patients represent a clinically meaningful, high-need patient cohort for a home visiting GP. These patients need regular contact, value continuity of care, and often have both greater clinical complexity and greater access barriers than the general GP population. Building a home visit practice around this cohort is building a practice that aligns clinical need with the value of what home visiting delivers — and that cannot be replicated by a 7-minute bulk billing clinic appointment.