Non-admitted patients activity

Non-admitted patient clinics are defined by the type of clinician who provided the service and the nature of the service provided.

Explore the data

The data visualisation below provides information on non-admitted clinics and service events in 2017–18 by:

• States and territories
• Clinic type

National trends

Services and activity

In 2017–18:

• Procedural clinics accounted for 8% of service events (3.1 million). Most major hospitals—Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals, Public acute group A hospitals and Public acute group B hospitals—reported service events for at least one of these clinics
• Medical consultation clinics accounted for 31% of service events (12.2 million). All major hospitals reported service events for at least one of these clinics
• Diagnostic services accounted for 15% of service events (5.8 million)
• Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics accounted for 46% of service events (17.8 million). All major hospitals reported service events for at least one of these clinics. About 22% of these service events were provided by smaller hospitals.

Clinic types

For Procedural clinics:

• the most common clinic was Dental clinics (36%, 1.1 million service events)
• there were more than 1.2 million oncology-related service events in Radiation therapy—treatment and Chemotherapy treatment clinics combined.

For Medical consultation clinics, the 3 most common clinics were:

• General practice and primary care (1.4 million service events, 95% were in New South Wales)
• Orthopaedics (1.1 million) 
• Medical oncology (consultation) (700,000)
• there were also 1.4 million service events in clinics dealing with obstetrics or gynaecology.

For Diagnostic services, the most common service was Pathology (microbiology, haematology, biochemistry) (3.2 million service events)—with almost all of these reported by New South Wales.

For Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics, the most common clinics were:

• Midwifery and maternity (2.3 million or 13% of service events)
• Primary health care (2.2 million service events)

Non-admitted service events are defined as an interaction between one or more health-care provider(s) with one non-admitted patient, which must contain therapeutic/clinical content and result in a dated entry in the patient’s medical record.

Non-admitted patients do not undergo a hospital’s formal admission process but instead receive services as outpatients. The type of care delivered during a non-admitted patient service event can be classified as:

• Subacute:
  • Rehabilitation care
  • Palliative care
  • Geriatric evaluation and management
  • Psychogeriatric care
• Mental health care
• Other (any care provided that does not fall within the categories above, for example, Maintenance care and Acute care)

The activity of non-admitted patient care is measured using two different sources:

• clinic-level service events data—used to describe overall patient care reported
• episode-level data—for the 72% of non-admitted patient service events that were also reported, used to provide more detailed information.

Explore the data

The data visualisation below provides information on non-admitted service events in 2017–18 by states and territories and:

• Peer group
• Data source
• Age group and sex
• Clinic type
• Remoteness
• Socioeconomic status
• Indigenous status

National trends

Clinic-level service events

In 2017–18:

• 38.9 million non-admitted patient service events were reported at the clinic level to the NNAPC(Agg)D by 601 public hospitals and 29 other services (including local hospital networks (LHNs) and private hospitals that provide public hospital services).
• Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals provided 44% of non-admitted patient service events and Public acute group A hospitals accounted for a further 26%.
• Other services accounted for another 1.7 million service events (4%).

Episode-level service events

In 2017–18:

• 28.2 million non-admitted patient service events were reported at the episode level to the NNAP(el)D by 511 public hospitals and 10 other services. These accounted for 72% of total activity reported for the NNAPC(Agg)D.
• Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals reported 46% of episode-level non‑admitted patient service events and Public acute group A hospitals accounted for a further 28%.