Non-admitted patient activity

Non-admitted service events are defined as an interaction between one or more health-care providers with a non-admitted patient, which must contain therapeutic/clinical content and result 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.

Highlights

Clinic-level service events

In 2019–20:

• 38.2 million non-admitted patient care service events were recorded at the clinic-level in the NNAPC(Agg)D—852,000 fewer service events (2.2%) than were recorded in 2018–19. The reduction was likely due to restrictions introduced in response to COVID-19
• 595 public hospitals and 35 other services (including services provided at the Local Hospital Network (LHN) level, at state-wide level, and private hospitals that provide public hospital services) provided non-admitted patient care
• Principal referral and women’s and children’s hospitals provided 45% of non-admitted patient service events and Public acute group A hospitals accounted for a further 28%
• Other services accounted for another 2.2 million service events (5.8%).

Episode-level service events

In 2019–20:

• 28.6 million non-admitted patient service events were reported at the episode-level to the NNAP(el)D 
• 502 public hospitals and 10 other services provided these 28.6 million episode-levelservices, and these accounted for 75% of total non-admitted patient service events

• 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 29%.

Patient characteristics

Episode-level data contains information about the people who used non-admitted patient services. 

Of the 28.6 million non-admitted patient service events:

• 56% of service events (16.0 million) were provided to females and 44% of service events (12.5 million) were provided to males
• males aged 45 and over were more likely to receive non-admitted patient care (65% of services used by males), whereas females aged 20–45 were more likely to receive non-admitted patient care (37% of services used by females)
• 5.8% of service events were for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and 92% were for non-Indigenous Australians
• 60% of service events were for people living in Major cities and 19% were for people living in Inner regional areas
• 21% of service events were for people classified as being from the lowest socioeconomic status of area of usual residence.

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. 

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.

Highlights

Of the 38.2 million total service events reported to NAP(Agg)D, in 2019–20:

• Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics accounted for 48% of service events (18.3 million)
• Medical consultation clinics accounted for 29% of service events (11.1 million). All major hospitals reported service events for at least one of these clinics
• Diagnostic services clinics accounted for 15% of service events (5.7 million)
• Procedural clinics accounted for 8.1% 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.

Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics

For Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics, the clinic types that provided the highest number of services were:

• Midwifery and maternity (2.2 million services events, or 12% of service events delivered by allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics)
• Primary health care (1.7 million service events, or 9.2%).

Medical consultation clinics

For Medical consultation clinics, the clinic types that provided the highest number of services were:

• Orthopaedics (1.0 million service events, 9.3% of all service events provided in medical consultation clinics) 
• Medical oncology (consultation) (830,000 service events, 7.5%)
• Ophthalmology (500,000 service events, 4.5%).

There were also 870,000 service events in obstetric clinics for management of pregnancy with or without complications. 

Diagnostic services

For Diagnostic clinics, the clinic types that provided the highest number of service events were:

• Diagnostic services, Pathology (microbiology, haematology, biochemistry) clinics (3.2 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 also differences in data collection and reporting for these services.

Procedural clinics

For Procedural clinics, the clinic types that provided the highest number of services were:

• Dental clinics (970,000 service events, 31% of all service events provided by procedural clinics)
• Radiation therapy (treatment) clinics provided 27% of service events in procedural clinics, and Chemotherapy (treatment) clinics provided a further 16%.