Data collection, analysis and reporting
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care to compile and maintain the National Rheumatic Heart Disease data collection, and to analyse and report annually on these data.
COVID-19 impacted both the health sector and the utilisation of health services in 2020 and 2021. This could have affected results such as diagnosis rates, benzathine benzylpenicillin G (BPG) delivery and the number of surgeries undertaken. Further information on how the pandemic affected ARF and RHD specifically is not available.
Important notes when reading this report
The numbers in this report may not match those in previous reports
- Data in the collection are updated over time as the jurisdictional programs clean and improve their data or receive historical information.
- Service providers may not be ready to submit the data although the services have been provided in the reporting period. These data will be added in future reports when they become available.
New content in this report
- Modified the report to focus on single-year data instead of the 5-year combined data of previous reports.
- All statistical information for previous years has been updated as trend data in this report. Changes between years are presented in the trend analysis in each section of the report. Data in the collection are updated over time as the jurisdictional programs undertake data cleaning and quality improvement activity, so numbers in this report may not match those in previous reports. Comparisons to the results in previous versions of the report is discouraged.
- In addition to regional information, the information on remoteness has been added where available. The definition of Remoteness is included in the Glossary.
- Information on hospitalisations for ARF and RHD has been added.
- A new chapter has been included on socioeconomic and environmental factors has been included.
Terminology
The AIHW recognises the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures across Australia. In this report, several terms are used to refer to this population specifically based on AIHW publication guidelines, including Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, First Nations and Indigenous status. Further information on how these terms were applied in this report is available in the Glossary.