Hospitals
Non-admitted patient activity
A non-admitted patient service event is defined as an interaction between one or more health-care providers with a non-admitted patient in an outpatient clinic or other setting, which includes therapeutic and/or clinical content and results in a dated entry in the patient’s medical record.
Explore the data
The data visualisation below provides information on non-admitted patient service events by hospital peer group, type of clinic, and selected patient characteristics.
Bar graph showing non-admitted patient service events in 2024–25 by age and sex. The largest age group among males was 70–74 (1,700,920 events), among females it was 30–34 (2,268,098 events).
Overview of non-admitted patient service events
In 2024–25, 590 public hospitals and 27 other health service providers (including services provided at the Local Hospital Network level, state-wide level, and private hospitals that provide public hospital services) provided non-admitted patient care.
In total:
- 43.6 million service events were provided in 2024–25
- 44% of services were provided by Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals
- 27% were provided by Public acute group A hospitals.
Who received these non-admitted patient services?
Where possible, the data that is provided to describe non-admitted patient service events is reported at the episode-level, for example relating to a specific service event. Episode-level data provides more detailed information than clinic-level information on patient characteristics and characteristics of the service event.
In 2024–25, 567 public hospitals and 27 other services reported episode-level data about 39.6 million non-admitted patient service events – 91% of the total non-admitted patient service events provided.
Of these 39.6 million non-admitted patient service events:
- over 1 in 2 (54%) services were provided to females
- nearly 1 in 2 (49%) of service events were provided to people aged 55 or over, and a further 19% were provided to people aged 25–39
- over 1 in 20 (6.7%) services were provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (First Nations) people
- almost 3 in 5 (57%) services were provided to people living in Major cities
- over 1 in 5 (22%) services were provided to people living in the lowest socioeconomic area.
A higher number of services were provided to males (compared with females) in the age groups 0–14 and 60–84, and a higher number of services were provided to females (compared with males) in the age groups 15–54. These differences were most pronounced in the 25–39 age groups, where, on average, three-quarters of services (76%) were provided to females.
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
More information on these data is available in tables 1.1 and 2.1–S2.5 in the Non-admitted patient care 2024–25 data tables [XLSX 142kB].
Data about non-admitted care service events are obtained from 2 different sources.
- Episode-level data for 91% of non-admitted patient service events that are reported to the collections provides information about the patients who received the services, how the services were delivered, and the type of care provided. The information presented in this report based on the NNAP(el)D may not be representative of the non-admitted patient care activity provided by hospitals (or other services) for which data were not reported to the NNAP(el)D.
- For all other services, the data are reported at the clinic-level. Clinic-level service events data from the NNAPC(agg)D provide information on the type of clinic, and aggregate data (counts) on non-admitted patient care services.
The data from the 2 data collections are used together to present a complete view of non-admitted patient activity in Australian public hospitals. Note that there is variation in the type of information each jurisdiction can provide and therefore, comparison between states and territories should be interpreted with caution.