Method
Participants
Participants were general practices in the catchment of the Metro North Brisbane and Darling Downs and South West Queensland Medicare Locals (government sponsored organisations to support primary health care providers) or associated with the University of Queensland, Discipline of General Practice and based in Southern Queensland.
Procedure
As there is no central register of general practices, contact details were obtained from one Medicare Local, the telephone book, internet sites and from personal contacts to develop a comprehensive list of active general practices in the geographic area of interest. Between February and July 2013, 497 general practices were contacted by phone and mailed or faxed a questionnaire and participant information sheet for the Practice Manager or similar staff member to complete. A follow-up phone call was made two weeks later if there had been no response. The questionnaires could be completed in hard copy and returned by fax or in a reply paid envelope or completed online. Ethics approval was obtained from the Behavioural and Social Sciences Ethical Review Committee of the University of Queensland (Approval no 2012001264). Return of the questionnaire was deemed to be informed consent.
Measures
A 20 item questionnaire (Additional file 1) developed for this study was reviewed by four GPs, a Child and Family Health nurse, an academic with an interest in maternal and infant health and a community representative. Items included: general practice location and the number of GPs in each practice; an estimate of the number of routine postpartum appointments (for mother or infant) made in the previous fortnight; the length of time usually booked for routine appointments for mothers and for infants in minutes (transformed into a categorical variable ≤15 mins, >15 mins); qualifications of PNs, and how often each PN saw postpartum mothers and infants (nearly always, sometimes, rarely or never); how practices identified new mothers and infants (All patients are asked why they need an appointment when they ring, Staff are aware of the patients of the practice who are pregnant and are asked if they have had their baby, We rely on the mother to inform the person making the appointment); which patients are bulk-billed (consultations charged directly to the government through Medicare [a universal health insurance scheme] with no gap fee for the patient) and what out-of-pocket expenses mothers could expect. There was also a free-text option for further comments.
Data analysis
Analysis was undertaken using SPSS for Windows (version 21.0) [15]. Descriptive statistics are presented as numbers and percentages. Chi Squared test compared practice location with how postpartum women were identified and the number of GPs in the practices with other Queensland data. The association between the number of GPs in the practices and mean number of postpartum consultations in the previous fortnight was assessed using ANOVA. To find variables that are associated with appointment booking times logistic regression was used to determine unadjusted Odds Ratios and 95 % confidence intervals. Variables were also assessed for their independent association with booked appointment time. Free text responses were grouped around common threads.