To evaluate whether the health system is meeting adequately the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, it is important to understand the use of and access to quality care, including primary health care, and specialists and hospital services. This page presents an overview of Indigenous Australians’ use of these health services, both Indigenous-specific and mainstream.
Indigenous Australians’ use of health services is also affected by the cultural safety of health services. For more information see Culturally safe health care for Indigenous Australians.
The Australian Government and state and territory governments fund Indigenous-specific services. Indigenous-specific primary health care services offer prevention, diagnosis and treatment of ill health in a range of health settings. These services are available through community clinics, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and other health care facilities. Indigenous-specific services are also offered in some public hospitals.
In 2017–18, 198 Indigenous-specific primary health care services reported to the AIHW’s Online services report: a total of 3.6 million episodes of care were delivered to around 483,000 clients, 81% of whom were Indigenous. Of the Indigenous-specific primary health care services reporting to the Online services report:
- around 7 in 10 (71% or 140 organisations) were Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services
- around 3 in 10 (29%) consisted of 48 government-run organisations (36 of these were Northern Territory Government-run clinics) and 10 other non-government-run organisations (AIHW 2019d).
See Primary health care.
In 2017–18, an estimated 9.5 million health and allied services claims were made by around 650,000 Indigenous patients through the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). Of these claims, 4.2 million were non-referred general practitioner (GP) services (AIHW 2020 forthcoming).
In 2017–18, MBS claim rates for non-referred GP visits for Indigenous Australians were 15% higher than for non-Indigenous Australians (age-standardised rates of 6,912 and 5,986 per 1,000 respectively). However MBS claim rates for specialist services by Indigenous Australians were 44% lower (age-standardised rates of 598 and 1,070 per 1,000 respectively). This large difference may reflect difficulties in accessing specialist services for many Indigenous Australians.
There was little difference in the claim rates for Indigenous Australians compared with non-Indigenous Australians for other services such as pathology and allied health (Figure 1).