Non-admitted patient activity
Non-admitted patients do not undergo a hospital’s formal admission process but instead receive services as outpatients. The types of services which non-admitted patients may access include procedural clinics, medical consultation clinics, diagnostic services, and allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics.
In 2021–22, non-admitted patient activity is measured using data from 2 different sources:
- clinic-level data from National Non-admitted patient care aggregate Database (NNAPC(agg)D) are used to describe overall non-admitted patient care reported
- episode-level data from National Non-admitted Patient episode-level Database (NNAP(el)D) accounts for 80% of non-admitted patient service events. These service events are used to provide more detailed information, including:
- patient characteristics of those who used these services
- how the services were delivered
- the type of care provided.
Every year many Australians receive services via ‘outpatient’ or non-admitted patient clinics. These services are often associated with an emergency or admitted patient episode for which diagnostic or follow-up care is required without needing the person to be admitted to hospital. The types of care they receive include consultations with specialist medical practitioners, the provision of diagnostic or other procedures, and allied health or clinical nurse specialist services.
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
At the clinic-level, the data visualisation below provides information on non-admitted patient service events by:
- state or territory of service provider
- peer group
- clinic type.
At the episode-level, the data visualisation below provides information on service events by selected patient characteristics:
- age group and sex
- Indigenous status
- remoteness of area of usual residence
- socioeconomic status of area of usual residence.
Non-admitted service events
All data in these visualisations are available for download in the Data & downloads section of the MyHospitals website.
Peer group
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by measure (hospitals and service events), data source and clinic type. National, state and territory data is available. In 2021–22, there were 23,876,122 non-admitted patient service events for Principal referral and Women’s and children’s hospitals.
Age and sex
This bar graph shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by age group and sex. National data is available. In 2021–22, the largest age group for males was 70–74 with 1,516,177 non-admitted patient service events, and for females was 30–34 with 2,674,617 non-admitted patient service events.
Indigenous status
This bar graph shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by Indigenous status. National, state and territory data is available. In 2021–22, there were 2,007,088 non-admitted patient service events for individuals of Aboriginal but not Torres Strait Islander origin, 117,739 non-admitted patient service events for individuals of Torres Strait Islander but not Aboriginal origin and 134,716 non-admitted patient service events for individuals of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin.
Remoteness
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by remoteness of area of usual residence. National data is available. In 2021–22, the number of non-admitted patient service events varied by remoteness with 28,644,413 service events in Major cities and 526,906 service events in Very Remote areas.
Socioeconomic status
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by socioeconomic status of area of usual residence. National data is available. In 2021–22, the number of non-admitted patient service events varied by socioeconomic status with 9,406,155 service events in category 1 (most disadvantaged) and 6,844,163 service events in category 5 (least disadvantaged).
Highlights
Clinic level service events
In 2021–22, 598 public hospitals and 32 other services (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.
- 55.4 million service events were reported.
- Over 2 in 5 (43%) service events were provided by Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals.
- Almost 1 in 4 were provided by Public acute group A hospitals (23%).
Episode-level service events
In 2021–22, 574 public hospitals and 25 other services reported service events at the episode level.
- 44.5 million non-admitted patient service events were reported at the episode-level – 80% of the total non-admitted patient service events reported.
- 45% of episode-level non‑admitted patient service events were provided by Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals.
- 1 in 4 were provided by Public acute group A hospitals (25%).
Patient characteristics
Episode-level data contains information about the people who used non-admitted patient services.
Of the 44.5 million non-admitted patient service events:
- over 1 in 2 (54%) service events (24.0 million) were provided to females (as identified in the data)
- a higher proportion of services were provided to males in the age groups 0–14 and 60–84, whereas a higher proportion of services were provided to females in the age group 15–59 and 85 years and older
- just over 1 in 20 (5.1%) service events were for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australians
- around 2 in 3 (64%) service events were for people living in Major cities
- 1 in 5 (21%) service events were provided to people living in the lowest socioeconomic areas.
What other information is available?
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
More information on these data are available in the Non-admitted patient care 2021–22 data tables, refer to tables 1.1 and 2.1–S2.5
Data about non-admitted care service events are obtained from 2 different sources:
- episode-level data for 80% 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 form a more complete view of non-admitted patient activity in Australian public hospitals. Note that there is variation in the ability of jurisdictions to provide information on the type of care and therefore, comparison between states and territories should be interpreted with caution.
Non-admitted patient clinics are defined by the type of clinician who provided the service and the nature of the service provided.
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.
Clinics are first categorised by the nature of the non-admitted service provided. 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.
Clinics are further categorised by the type of clinician providing the service, usually based on the speciality or profession of the clinician.
For example:
- a clinic run by a cardiothoracic surgeon who sees patients for consultations before and after cardiac surgery is classified to the cardiothoracic class
- a clinic run by an obstetrician who sees women for consultations before they give birth is classified to the obstetrics class
- a clinic run by a physiotherapist who sees patients for consultations and treatments is classified to the physiotherapy class.
There are also a number of classes for specialist clinics which treat patients with specific conditions. For example, there are clinic types for specialist burns clinics, transplant clinics and cystic fibrosis clinics.
Explore the data
The data visualisation below provides information on non-admitted clinics and service events by:
- Tier 2 clinic class of the service event
- state and territory of the hospital providing the service
- service delivery setting.
Non-admitted patient clinics
All data in these visualisations are available for download in the Data & downloads section of the MyHospitals website.
Tier 2 Clinic class
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by Tier 2 clinic class and service delivery setting. National data is available. In 2021–22, there were 33,775,008 service events which were on the hospital campus of the healthcare provider and 10,334,609 service events which were off the hospital campus of the healthcare provider.
Service delivery setting
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by Tier 2 Clinic class (clinic type). State and territory data are available for allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist clinics, diagnostic clinics, medical consultation clinics and procedural clinics. In 2021–22, there were 9,978,707 COVID–19 Vaccinations performed in procedural clinics.
Highlights
In 2021–22, of the 55.4 million total service events reported to the non-admitted patient data collections:
- Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics accounted for just under 2 in 5 service events (38%, 20.8 million)
- Procedural clinics accounted for just under 1 in 4 service events (23%, 12.9 million)
- Medical consultation clinics accounted for just under 1 in 4 service events (23%, 12.6 million)
- Diagnostic services accounted for almost 1 in 6 service events (16%, 9.0 million).
In total, 630 public hospitals or other services reported non-admitted patient service events in at least one clinic type. One-quarter of these hospitals (24%) were major hospitals (Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals, Public acute group A hospitals and Public acute group B hospitals), and they provided 73% of all non-admitted patient service events.
Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics
Of the 20.8 million service events in Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics:
- just under 1 in 7 service events were provided in COVID-19 response clinics (14%, 3.0 million service events)
- over 1 in 10 service events were delivered in Midwifery and maternity clinics (12%, 2.4 million)
- under 1 in 10 service events were delivered in Primary health care clinics (8%, 1.6 million).
Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinic service events were provided in 604 public hospitals or other services.
Medical consultation clinics
Of the 12.6 million service events provided in Medical consultation clinics:
- Just under 1 in 10 were delivered in Orthopaedics clinics (8.7%, 1.1 million service events).
- 7.2% were delivered in Medical oncology (consultation) clinics (911,000 service events).
There were also 1.1 million service events (8.6%) in Obstetric clinics for management of pregnancy with or without complications.
Medical consultation clinic service events were provided in 432 public hospitals or other services.
Diagnostic services
Of the 9.0 million service events provided in Diagnostic services clinics:
- 2 in 5 were provided in COVID-19 response diagnostics clinics (40%, 3.6 million service events).
- 1 in 3 were provided in Pathology (microbiology, haematology, biochemistry) clinics (32%, 2.9 million service events). Almost all service events of these clinic types were reported by New South Wales.
There was also great variability in the provision of other services through diagnostic services clinics across states and territories. This reflects the different arrangements for provision of these services across jurisdictions and differences in data collection and reporting for these services.
Diagnostic clinic service events were provided in 409 public hospitals or other services.
Procedural clinics
Of the 12.9 million service events provided in Procedural clinics:
- Over 3 in 4 were provided by Covid-19 vaccination clinics (77%, 10.0 million service events).
- 5.7% were provided in Radiation therapy (treatment) clinics (740,000 service events).
- 1 in 20 were provided in Dental clinics (5.3%, 690,000 service events).
- 4.1% were provided in Chemotherapy (treatment) clinics (530,000 service events).
Procedural clinic service events were provided in 457 public hospitals or other services.
COVID-19 related services and activity
In March 2020, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority introduced data reporting requirements to accommodate the emerging situation with COVID-19. Four new Tier 2 Clinic classes were added to capture activity associated with providing patients with a COVID-19 vaccination as well as the diagnosis or treatment of patients with COVID-19 in the outpatient or non-admitted hospital setting.
The new Tier 2 Clinic classes are:
- 10.21 COVID-19 vaccination – for vaccinations provided to admitted and non-admitted patients
- 20.57 COVID-19 response – clinics where a medical officer or nurse practitioner provide the majority of COVID-19 related services
- 40.63 COVID-19 response – clinics where an allied health professional or clinical nurse specialist provide the majority of COVID-19 related services
- 30.09 COVID-19 response diagnostics – diagnostic testing as a result of the Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Not all jurisdictions reported service events against these new classifications.
In 2021-22:
- 10.0 million COVID-19 vaccination (10.21) service events were provided by procedural clinics
- 345,000 COVID-19 response (20.57) service events were provided by medical consultation clinics
- 2.9 million COVID-19 response (40.63) service events were provided by allied health professionals and clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics
- 3.6 million COVID-19 response diagnostic (30.09) service events were provided by diagnostic services clinics.
What other information is available?
More information on these data are available in Non-admitted patient care 2021–22, refer to data tables 3.1–3.6.
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.
Further information about Non-admitted patient clinic types is available from the IHACPA website.
The classification used for non-admitted activity is the Tier 2 Non-Admitted Services Classification. Tier 2 categorises a hospital’s non-admitted services into classes that are generally based on the nature of the service provided and the type of clinician providing the service. More information about the classification is available on the IHPA website.