Time between health checks

This section looks at the length of time between consecutive health checks for different groups of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Most of the analysis refers to people who had at least one Indigenous‑‍specific health check in 2020–‍21, and describes the length of time between their most recent health check in that period and their previous most recent health check, if any, back to November 1999 (when Indigenous‑‍specific health checks were first introduced for people aged 55 and over). The trend over time, looking at Indigenous health check patients over 10 years, is shown at the end.

Proportions in this section use the group of patients (or sub-‍group) who had at least one Indigenous‑‍specific health check in the reference year (e.g. 2020–‍21) as the denominator, and not the total estimated Indigenous population. Therefore, the proportions are specific to the health check patients assessed in the reference year, and do not reflect the time between health checks for the entire Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

People without a previous health check on record (in other words, those with only one recorded MBS‑‍billed Indigenous‑‍specific health check in the relevant period) are included in the reporting of proportions, but do not factor into the reporting of mean and median months between consecutive health checks.

For additional information about the analysis, see Data and notes.

Overall, around 237,000 people had at least one Indigenous‑‍specific health check in 2020–‍21 (Figure 9). Of these:

  • 49,100 people (21%) had their previous health check less than 12 months earlier.
  • 40,900 people (17%) had their previous health check 12 to 14 months earlier.
  • Another 51,600 people (22%) had their previous health check 15 to 23 months earlier.
  • 39,300 people (17%) had no previous Indigenous‑specific health checks on record.
    • Note that this includes children under 5 years old, 44% (12,400) of whom had no prior Indigenous‑specific health checks (Figure 10).

On average, people with at least one Indigenous‑‍specific health check in 2020–‍21 and at least one earlier health check on record had their 2 most recent health checks 23.4 months apart. The median time between health checks was 16.0 months, for comparison (Figure 9).

Females had slightly less time between their most recent health checks, on average, than males (22.9 months compared with 24.1 months, respectively). Additionally, more males (18%) had no prior history of health checks than females (15%) (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Indigenous‑‍specific health check patients, by time between their 2 most recent health checks, by sex, 2020–‍21

An interactive bar graph showing the number of months or years between consecutive health checks for patients from 2020-21, by sex. An alternate graph shows the mean and median time between consecutive health checks. Females had slightly shorter time spans between health checks, on average, compared with males – 22.9 months for females, and 24.1 months for males. Refer to tables 'HC11' and 'HC16' in data tables.