Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2022) Indigenous health checks and follow-ups, AIHW, Australian Government, accessed 25 March 2023.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Indigenous health checks and follow-ups. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/indigenous-health-checks-follow-ups
Indigenous health checks and follow-ups. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 19 August 2022, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/indigenous-health-checks-follow-ups
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Indigenous health checks and follow-ups [Internet]. Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2022 [cited 2023 Mar. 25]. Available from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/indigenous-health-checks-follow-ups
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2022, Indigenous health checks and follow-ups, viewed 25 March 2023, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/indigenous-australians/indigenous-health-checks-follow-ups
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This section looks at the variation in rates of Indigenous‑specific health checks across Australia. See Box 2 for information about the reporting of geographic data.
Geographic region types
The geographic areas presented in this report relate to one another as depicted below:
Notes:
Postcode data
This analysis is based on the postcode of the patient’s given mailing address. As a result, the data may not reflect where the person actually lived – particularly for people who use PO Boxes. This is likely to impact some areas more than others, and will also have a generally greater impact on the SA3 data than on the larger geographic classifications. See Box 5 in Data sources and notes for information on areas most likely to be affected.
Metropolitan classification
To distinguish different geographic regions based on their level of urban development, certain bar charts in Figure 4 and Figure 16 depict areas as:
Figure 4 shows the rate of Indigenous‑specific health checks in 2020–21, by 6 different geographic classifications – state/territory, Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (GCCSA), remoteness area, Primary Health Network (PHN), Indigenous Regions (IREG) and Statistical Areas Level 3 (SA3). See Box 2 for information about the reporting of geographic data.
In 2020–21:
A set of interactive choropleth maps and bar graphs, showing the rate of health checks by various geographic breakdowns in 2020-21. Rates are relatively high in northern Australia compared with southern Australia. A filter allows for the selection of telehealth status. Refer to tables 'HC03' to 'HC08' in data tables.
Across the 5 remoteness areas, the rate of Indigenous‑specific health checks in 2020–21 was generally higher in more remote areas – increasing from 24% in Major cities to 33% in Outer regional and Remote areas. Very remote areas were the exception to this general pattern, with a rate of 25% (Figure 4). This may be partly due to the use of mailing address to derive these rates – in particular, where a person lives in a Very remote area, but has mail delivered to a PO Box in a less remote location, the health check will be counted in the less remote location. Another explanatory factor would be the availability of GPs in more remote areas (RACGP 2020).
Across Indigenous Regions, the rate of Indigenous‑specific health checks was highest in Alice Springs (52%) and lowest in Melbourne (10%) (Figure 4). Note that the rate in Alice Springs is likely to be inflated, since many residents of Central Australia use PO Boxes located in Alice Springs for receiving mail. This means some of the health checks counted in Alice Springs probably belong to residents of Apatula (IREG).
Across SA3s, the rate of Indigenous‑specific health checks in 2020–21 ranged from 2% in Pittwater (NSW) to 54% in Townsville (Qld) (Figure 4; analysis relates to 329 areas for which rates could be reported).
On average, the rate of Indigenous‑specific health checks was higher in SA3s with larger Indigenous populations. For example, the rate of health checks, when averaged across the SA3s in 2020–21, was:
In 2020–21, about 7 in 10 SA3s (71%, or 235 areas) had a rate below the national average (that is, a rate lower than 27.2%). This is because SA3s with larger populations – which tended to have higher rates of health checks – contribute more to the national rate than the smaller SA3s.
Breaking down the rates of Indigenous‑specific health checks by state/territory and age groups reveals some noteworthy differences between the jurisdictions (Figure 5).
Indigenous Australians aged 55 and over have the highest rates of health checks in all jurisdictions except the Northern Territory, where young children (aged 0–4) have the highest rate. Tasmania has a higher overall rate of Indigenous health checks than Victoria, predominantly due to differences in the oldest age groups (25–54 and ‘55 and over’) (Figure 5).
An interactive column graph showing the rates of health checks by state or territory and age group in 2020-21. All jurisdictions had their highest rate of health checks among people aged 55 and over, except the Northern Territory – in which, it was those aged 0-4. Refer to table 'HC03' in data tables.
As a proportion of all patients who received an Indigenous‑specific health check in 2020–21, around 5% had a health check completed at least partly via telehealth (12,000 out of 237,000 patients). There was considerable variation between areas though, with relatively high proportions of telehealth use in Greater Adelaide (16%), Greater Melbourne (14%), Greater Sydney (11%) and the Rest of Victoria (10%), contrasting with very low proportions in Greater Perth (1.2%), the Rest of Western Australia (1.5%), the Australian Capital Territory (1.7%) and Greater Darwin (1.9%) (Figure 6).
An interactive column graph showing each Greater Capital City Statistical Area by the proportion of health check patients in 2020-21 that received a health check via telehealth. Greater Adelaide topped the ranking, at 16%, compared with a national rate of 5%. The lowest rate was 1% in Greater Perth. Derived from table 'HC04' in data tables.
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) (2020) ‘General Practice: Health of the Nation 2020’, RACGP.
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