Policy Priority: Health and wellbeing
Poorer health experiences among people with disability can be due to inadequate access to health care or the provision of inadequate care. Health care issues can include access to health services; the appropriateness of equipment, training or facilities; the operation of health systems and processes; and health care worker attitudes.
Ensuring that health service providers have the capabilities to meet the needs of people with disability is essential to attaining the highest possible health and wellbeing outcomes for people with disability.
The purpose of the “Health and wellbeing” policy priority is to support the health of people with disability by improving their experience when they need to access health services. There are 3 measures under this Policy Priority:
- Potentially avoidable deaths (updated)
- Community health care satisfaction (baseline added)
- Self-reported health.
The updated measure is discussed below.
Measure: Potentially avoidable deaths
Potentially avoidable deaths are deaths where the underlying cause is potentially preventable, through health care screening or primary prevention, or potentially treatable through existing primary or hospital care. This is an internationally recognised way of assessing health outcomes and health system performance. For more information, go to Data Dictionary: Potentially avoidable deaths.
This measure replaced the previous measure – Proportion of people with disability who reported unmet need for hospital admission in the last 12 months.
The measure looks at the number of potentially avoidable deaths per 100,000 of people with disability compared with the rate for people without disability. In 2025, this measure is disaggregated by sex and age group only.
Potentially avoidable deaths
Latest update: 238 per 100,000 people with disability; 33 per 100,000 people without disability (2021–22)
Baseline: 228 per 100,000 people with disability; 33 per 100,000 people without disability (2020–21)
Progress status (preliminary): No change
In 2021–22:
- the rate of potentially avoidable deaths (PADs) per 100,000 people was greater in females with disability (255) than males with disability (225), but smaller in females without disability (27) than males without disability (39)
- the rate of PADs per 100,000 people was highest in the 65 and over age group for people both with and without disability (668 and 111, respectively) and lowest in the under 15 age group for people with and without disability (8 and 2, respectively).
Figure 7.1: Number of potentially avoidable deaths in hospital of people with disability compared with people without disability (per 100,000), 2020–21 to 2021–22
The data in the graph and the table below show the number of potentially avoidable deaths in hospital of people with disability, compared with people without disability (per 100,000). Data from 2020–21 to 2021–22 are used. In 2021–22, there were 238 potentially avoidable deaths per 100,000 people with disability during hospital admission or emergency department presentation, compared with 33 deaths per 100,000 people without disability.
| Year | With disability | Without disability |
|---|---|---|
| 2020–21 | 228 | 33 |
| 2021–22 | *238 | *33 |
Notes:
- Data for this measures come from the National Health Data Hub (NHDH). For more information, see Data source – National Health Data Hub.
- This analysis excludes measuring avoidable deaths and the population in WA/NT due to data availability. ACT data are currently excluded for 2021–22 due to a technical issue. Work is underway to resolve this.
- People with disability include individuals who received disability-related government payments or services. People with disability aged 65 and over are under-represented. This does not represent all people with disability. As a result, people with disability who did not receive these disability-related government payments or services are counted under people without disability in these data. For more information, see NDDA Disability Indicators Explanatory Notes.
- Deaths registered in 2020 and earlier are based on the final version of cause of death data; deaths registered in 2021 are based on revised version; and deaths registered in 2022 are based on the preliminary version. Revised and preliminary versions are subject to further revision by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
- The potentially avoidable death criteria were not specifically designed for people with disability. This analysis uses a modification of the agreed method to calculate Potentially Avoidable Deaths [National Healthcare Agreement: PI 16 - Potentially Avoidable Deaths, 2024]. In this analysis, deaths must have occurred during admitted patient care or during an emergency department visit in addition to the agreed methodology.
- Rates are expressed as the number of deaths per 100,000 population. Crude rates are calculated using the sum of resident populations at 30 June of the previous financial year, estimated from NHDH data. Residents of WA and NT are excluded.
- Note that time series comparisons should be interpreted with care. An analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the rate of potentially avoidable deaths of people with disability compared with people without disability was beyond the scope of the ADS OF project at this time.
- Research suggests that the established methodology for attributing a death as a potentially avoidable death can lead to misattribution of cause of death for people with disability and potential under-classification of deaths in the disability population as potentially avoidable deaths (lowering the rate for the disability population).
- Validation work completed for the first-generation of NDDA disability indicators has found that the indicators do not capture older Australians with disability as well as other age groups. Older Australians (such as those aged 65 and over) are both more likely to have disability and a higher rate of potentially avoidable deaths. This underrepresentation potentially has inverse effects on the populations of both the people with disability and people without disability used in this analysis (lowering the overall rate of potentially avoidable deaths for the disability population and increasing the rate of potentially avoidable deaths for the non-disability population).
- ACT data are currently excluded for 2021–22 due to a technical issue. Work is underway to resolve this.
Source: AIHW NHDH 2021–22, analysis of NHDH.
*ACT data are currently excluded for 2021–22 due to a technical issue. Work is underway to resolve this.
Source:
AIHW NHDH 2021–22, analysis of NHDH
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Data source overview
For figure notes, see Appendix B: Figure notes and sources.
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Policy Priority: Prevention and early intervention