Geographies used in this report
In this report, regions of residence were based on where a person lived in 2019, or where they died in 2020–2021. In the linked data, there is no address information for residential aged care facilities. Deaths data from 2020–2021 were used as the first source of address because they are considered the most accurate, particularly for people who moved to access residential aged care (Royal Commission 2020) and may not have updated their address in Medicare. As such, it should be noted that a person’s region of residence when they died may not be the same as where they previously lived. If a person had not died, their address was taken from hospital or Medicare/PBS service data in 2019.
Users can explore charts at 4 levels of geography based on region of residence (not where they received services):
- remoteness areas
- based on the 2016 Remoteness Area Structure within the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS), including Major cities of Australia, Inner regional Australia, Outer regional Australia, and Remote and very remote Australia (aggregated to ensure data confidentiality and quality)
- socioeconomic areas
- based on the 2016 Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) quintiles
- the majority (71%) of people in the dementia study cohort lived in Major cities, which are socioeconomically diverse. For this reason, data are also presented for socioeconomic areas within Major cities and Outside major cities
- Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) regions
- SA4 regions represent labour markets, with populations between 100,000 people (in regional areas) and 500,000 people (in capital cities).
- state/territory
- data are only presented for states/territories with hospital data in the NIHSI: New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
See the Technical guide for more information.
References
Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2020) Research Paper 16 – How far do people move to access aged care? Australian Government, accessed 9 October 2023.