Indigenous health checks and follow-ups

Over a 5-year period from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2020, about 533,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people received at least one Indigenous-specific health check. This is equivalent to over half (62%) of the Indigenous population at 30 June 2020, acknowledging that a small proportion of those patients may have either died or moved overseas during the 5-year period.

The 533,000 Indigenous-specific health check patients included around:

• 216,000 people who received 1 health check during the 5 year period (equivalent to 25% of the Indigenous population)
• 140,000 people who received 2 health checks (16%)
• 93,200 people who received 3 health checks (11%)
• 56,200 people who received 4 health checks (7%)
• 28,400 people who received 5 or more health checks (3%) (Figure 6).

Indigenous females were more likely than Indigenous males to have received at least one Indigenous-specific health check during the 5-year period—equivalent to 65% of the Indigenous female population compared with 59% of the Indigenous male population.

Figure 6: Indigenous-specific health check patients, by number of checks, 2015–16 to 2019–20 combined

Over the 5-year period from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2020, across states and territories, the proportion of the Indigenous population who received:

• at least one Indigenous-specific health check was highest in the Northern Territory (equivalent to 76%), followed by Queensland (75%); the rate was lowest in Tasmania (31%).
• 5 or more Indigenous-specific health checks was highest in Queensland (5.8%), and lowest in Tasmania (0.7%) (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Indigenous-specific health check patients, by state and territory, and number of checks, 2015–16 to 2019–20 combined