Hospitals
Funding sources for non-admitted patient care
Non-admitted patient services are funded through a range of sources, which can be assigned to the following four broad categories:
- Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS)
- Department of Veterans’ Affairs
- Compensable – which includes service events where the funding source is reported as Worker’s compensation, Motor vehicle third party personal claim, or Other compensation
- Other – any funding sources that do not fall within the categories above (including Health service budget, Private health insurance and Self-funded).
Additional information about key terms can be found in the ‘More information about the data’ section below.
Explore the data
In the data visualisation below, you can explore clinic-level data on non-admitted patient service events by funding source and Tier 2 clinic class.
Service events
This table shows the number of individual and group service events in 2022–23. Data is presented by funding source. National data is available. In 2022–23, there were a total of 41.1 million individual and group service events.
Tier 2 Clinic Type
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2022–23. Data is presented by Tier 2 clinic class and funding source. National data is available. In 2022–23, there were 19.6 million allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist clinic service events.
Funding source overview
In 2024–25, of the 43.6 million non-admitted patient service events:
- Around 9 in 10 (88%) were funded by sources categorised as Other (which includes the Health services budget)
- most of the remaining service events (11%) were funded through the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS)
- less than 1% were funded by either the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or Compensable sources.
There was variation across states and territories in funding sources for non-admitted patient service events. For example, the proportion of service events funded through the MBS varied from around 4% for Western Australia and Tasmania to approximately 17% in New South Wales.
Funding source by clinic class
The source of funding for non-admitted patient service events varies by clinic type and across states and territories. However, nationally in 2024–25:
- in Procedural clinics, 68% of service events were funded by Other sources, 32% were funded through the MBS, and less than 1% of service events were funded by Compensable and Department of Veterans’ Affairs combined
- in Medical consultation clinics, 79% service events were funded by Other sources, 20% were funded through the MBS, and less than 1% of service events were funded by Compensable and Department of Veterans’ Affairs combined
- in clinics providing Diagnostic services, 76% of service events were funded by Other sources and 23% were funded through the MBS
- in Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics, nearly all (99%) service events were funded by Other sources and 1.0% were funded through the MBS, Compensable and Department of Veterans’ Affairs combined.
These data are sourced from the National Non-admitted Patient Care (aggregate) Database and the National Non-admitted Patient (episode-level) Database. More information on these data is available in tables 4.1–S4.5 in the Non-admitted patient care 2024–25 data tables [XLSX 142kB]. Appendixes and caveat information for this data is available to download in the About the data. Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
Funding source
There are four funding sources that could be assigned to non-admitted patient care service events:
- Medicare Benefits Schedule
- Department of Veterans’ Affairs
- Compensable – which includes:
- Worker’s compensation
- Motor vehicle third party personal claim
- Other compensation
- Other – which includes:
- Health service budget (including Reciprocal Health Care Agreements, or where no charge was raised due to hospital decision). This category includes both state/territory and Australian Government contributions
- Other hospital or public authority (contracted care)
- Department of Defence
- Correctional facilities
- Private health insurance
- Self-funded
- Other funding source
- Not known.
Non-admitted patient clinics
Tier 2 clinic class categorises a hospital’s non-admitted services into classes which are generally based on the nature of the service provided and the type of clinician providing the service.
The major categories are:
- Procedural clinics – which provide minor surgical and non-surgical procedures (that do not require the patient to be admitted) by a surgeon or other medical specialist
- Medical consultation clinics – typically provided by a medical or nurse practitioner. There may also be input from allied health personnel and/or clinical nurse specialists
- Diagnostic service clinics – which provide diagnostic services within a specific field of medicine or condition. These services include imaging, screening, clinical measurement and pathology
- Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics – which provide services by an allied health professional or clinical nurse specialist. Allied health professionals include a range of occupations that provide diagnostic, technical and therapeutic services to the aged care, mental health, disability and health sectors.
A clinic may provide a range of health services that fall into different Tier 2 clinic classes, and when this occurs, the clinic is classified based on its predominant activity.
More information about Tier 2 clinic classes can be found in the section Non-admitted patient clinic types. Alternatively, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority website contains information on the Tier 2 Non-Admitted Services Classification.