Objective: To examine relations between consultation length and content, and general practitioner choice of claiming level B or C when billing consultations > 20 minutes through Medicare. Design and setting: A secondary analysis from a cross‐sectional national general practice survey (1 April 2000 to 31 March 2003) of 101 112 consultations with 2811 GPs, comparing level B consultations ≤ 20 minutes with consultations > 20 minutes (claimed as level B or C), and consultations > 20 minutes claimed as level C with those claimed as level B. Main outcome measures: Consultation length, encounter, patient characteristics; number, type of problems managed; type and frequency of treatments provided in relation to consultation level charged. Results: There were 80 476 level B consultations ≤ 20 minutes and 14 893 > 20 minutes claimed as level B or C (5725 [38.4%] level B; 9168 [61.5%] level C). Longer level B+C consultations differed from shorter level B consultations in patient sex, Department of Veterans’ Affairs card status, and new‐patient status, and involved more reasons for encounter, problems managed, chronic problems, clinical treatments, therapeutic procedures, referrals and pathology and imaging orders. Longer consultations claimed as level C were significantly longer (0.9 minutes) than those claimed as level B and involved more reasons for encounter, problems managed (particularly new, chronic, psychosocial and gynaecological) and more clinical treatments. Conclusions: Patient characteristics and consultation content differ at longer consultations. Consultations charged as level C are more complex than those charged as level B. GPs use both time and content when choosing item number, rather than relying only on specified time thresholds. This has implications for future restructuring of MBS attendance items.

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Herein we describe production of purified equine IgG obtained from horses immunized with plasmid DNA followed by boosting with Kunjin replicon virus-like particles both encoding a modified Ebola glycoprotein. Administration of the equine IgG over 5 days to cynomolgus macaques infected 24 hours previously with a lethal dose of Ebola virus suppressed viral loads by more than 5 logs and protected animals from mortality. Animals generated their own Ebola glycoprotein-specific IgG responses 9–15 days after infection, with circulating virus undetectable by day 15–17. Such equine IgG may find utility as a post-exposure prophylactic for Ebola infection and provides a low cost, scalable alternative to monoclonal antibodies, with extensive human safety data and WHO-standardized international manufacturing capability available in both high and low income countries.

: Conventional concern that corticosteroid treatment will exacerbate disease appears unjustified for alphaviral arthritides once serodiagnosis has demonstrated antiviral immunity.