Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific primary health care: results from the OSR and nKPI collections

Client numbers

Client numbers refers to how many individuals receive health care from an organisation during the collection period. Each individual is counted as a client once only within an organisation, regardless of how many times they are seen. Visitors and transient clients are included in client counts, but clients attending group activities only (and who do not receive individual care) are excluded.

A client may attend more than one organisation. The extent this occurs is not known and is not adjusted for.

See also Technical notes.

Client contacts

Client contacts are a count of the contacts made by each type of health worker in an organisation (both employed and visiting health staff), and include those made by drivers and field officers (transport contacts). Client contacts do not include administrative contacts or those relating to groups and residential care.

See also Technical notes.

Episodes of care

An episode of care is a contact between a client and one or more health workers in an organisation in one calendar day. All contacts with the same client on the same day are counted as one episode of care only, but if more than one health worker sees that client in the same day (for example, both a nurse and doctor see the same client) then one episode of care will count as multiple client contacts. An episode of care may be provided by employed or visiting health staff, either on site or off site, and includes outreach, hospital contact with clients, telephone contacts of a clinical nature, care delivered over the phone which results in an update to a client’s record and other clinical consultations. Episodes of care do not include administrative contacts or those relating to groups and residential care.

Episodes of care data for 2016–17 are not comparable with other years because changes were made to the types of contacts counted as an episode of care. There were also corrections made to the counting rules used by one clinical information system which did not fully align with the episode of care definition (which had not changed since originally agreed in 2008–09). These led to lower numbers of episodes of care recorded and potential undercounts for some services in 2016–17. This also affected counts of client contacts in that year.

See also Technical notes.