Spending on non-admitted patient care

Non-admitted patient services are funded through a range of channels. For the clinic‑level data, 4 funding sources could be assigned:

Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS)
Department of Veterans’ Affairs
Compensable
Other

Explore the data

In the data visualisation below you can explore individual and aggregate non-admitted patient service events types by clinic type and funding source.

National trends

Funding source

In 2017–18:

the Other category (any care provided that does not fall within the other categories above (including Health service budget, Private health insurance and Self-funded) was reported as the funding source for 86% of non-admitted patient service events
MBS funded 13% of service events, and less than 1% were funded by either the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or Compensable sources.

Funding by clinic type

Funding source varied across the clinic types, and among states and territories.

For example, the proportion of service events funded by the MBS in:

Procedural clinics—ranged from 18% in New South Wales to 82% in the Australian Capital Territory
Medical consultation clinics—ranged from 4% in Western Australia to 41% in Victoria
Diagnostic services—ranged from 3% in the Northern Territory to 52% in Tasmania
Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics—ranged from 0.1% in the Northern Territory to 4.7% in Tasmania.

More information about the data Expand

What other information is available?

More information on how care was funded, appendixes and caveat information is available in Non-admitted patient care 2017–18 report and data tables

Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.

Funding source

For the clinic level data provided, 4 funding sources could be assigned:

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

Non-admitted patient clinics

The clinics are categorised into 4 major classes:

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.

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.