Spending on non-admitted patient care
This section presents information on the main sources of funding for non-admitted patient services, including:
- funding sources for individual and group service events
- funding sources by type of service (Tier 2 Clinic Class).
In 2021–22, non-admitted patient activity is measured using data from 2 different sources:
- clinic-level data from the National Non-admitted Patient Care aggregate Database (NNAPC(agg)D) are used to describe overall non-admitted patient care reported
- episode-level data from the 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.
Non-admitted patient services are funded through a range of sources. For the clinic‑level data, the funding sources have been assigned to the following four broad categories:
- Medicare Benefits Scheme (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
- individual and group service events
- Tier 2 clinic class.
Data on expenditure on non-admitted patient care services is not available as part of this data collection, however information about spending on public hospitals in Australia can be found on the Spending on hospitals page.
Spending on non-admitted patients
Funding source
All data in these visualisations are available for download in the Data & downloads section of the MyHospitals website.
Service events
This table shows the number of individual and group service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by funding source. National data is available. In 2021–22, there were a total of 55,351,636 individual and group service events.
Tier 2 Clinic Type
This table shows the number of non-admitted patient service events in 2021–22. Data is presented by Tier 2 clinic class and funding source. National data is available. In 2021–22, there were 20,842,113 allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist clinic service events.
Highlights
Funding source
In 2021–22, of the 55.4 million service events reported to the non-admitted patient data collections:
- 9 in 10 (89%) were funded by sources categorised as Other
- the remaining service events (11%) were funded through the Medicare Benefits Scheme (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 2.2% in Western Australia to 27% in the Australian Capital Territory.
Tier 2 clinic class
The source of funding for non-admitted patient service events varies by clinic type and across states and territories.
In 2021–22:
- in Procedural clinics 94% of service events were funded by Other sources and 6.1% were funded through the MBS
- in Medical consultation clinics, 3 in 4 (75%) service events were funded by Other sources and 1 in 4 (24%) were funded through the MBS
- in clinics providing Diagnostic services, over 4 in 5 (82%) service events were funded by Other sources and just under 1 in 5 (18%) were funded through the MBS
- in Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics, nearly all (97%) service events were funded by Other sources and 2.8% was funded through the MBS
- the state with the highest proportion of service events funded through the MBS for procedural clinics and for medical consultation clinics was Victoria (60% and 42% respectively), for diagnostic services was the Australian Capital Territory (79%) and for allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics was South Australia (22%).
What other information is available?
More information on these data are available in the Non-admitted patient care 2021–22 data tables, refer to tables 4.1–S4.5.
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary and technical specifications are available in the Info & Downloads area, in the About the data section.
Funding source
There are four funding sources that could be assigned to non-admitted patient care service events:
- Medicare Benefits Scheme
- 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.
Tier 2 clinic class
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. An 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 service events in the Non-admitted patient activity area of the MyHospitals site. Alternatively, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) website contains information on the Tier 2 Non-Admitted Services Classification.