Introduction
Information on First Nations-specific primary health care organisations (referred to as organisations in this report) is available through 2 national data collections, the Online Services Report (OSR) and the national Key Performance Indicators (nKPI):
- the OSR is conducted once each financial year (1 July to 30 June) to collect contextual information about the organisations, such as client numbers, client contacts, episodes of care, staffing levels and vacancies
- the nKPI is conducted twice a year (with census dates at 30 June and 31 December) to collect a set of process-of-care and health-status indicators focused on maternal and child health, preventative health and chronic condition management.
This report presents the latest results from these collections.
Purpose of the OSR and nKPI collections
The main purpose of the OSR and nKPI collections is to support continuous quality improvement (CQI) activity among organisations. The data can also be used to support policy and service planning (for example, by monitoring progress and highlighting areas for improvement), to monitor progress against the Closing the Gap targets, and to support the priorities set out in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021–2031.
The organisations can be split into 2 main types (referred to as organisation type):
- Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) are initiated and operated by their local Aboriginal communities through locally elected Boards of Management. ACCHOs generally deliver a set of services deemed to be ‘comprehensive health care’.
- Non-Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (non-ACCHOs) are a mix of government-run organisations (such as local health districts) and non-government organisations (such as not-for-profit charitable health services). Non-ACCHOs may offer a limited or a full range of services.
While both types of organisations share a commitment to providing culturally appropriate health care, they can have very different profiles (Table 1). For example, they vary in governance structure, size, workforce composition, additional sources of funding, the services they offer, and the needs of their clients. Caution should therefore be used when comparing data by organisation type.
Measure | ACCHO | Non-ACCHO | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
Clients (mean) | 3,000 | 975 | 2,407 |
Clients (median) | 2,276 | 656 | 1,570 |
First Nations clients (mean) | 2,516 | 812 | 2,017 |
First Nations clients (median) | 1,592 | 520 | 1,138 |
Client contacts (mean) | 36,984 | 8,635 | 28,677 |
Client contacts (median) | 25,461 | 6,278 | 14,623 |
Episodes of care (mean) | 23,735 | 6,761 | 18,738 |
Episodes of care (median) | 17,136 | 4,889 | 10,824 |
| Employed health full-time equivalent (FTE) staff (mean) | 36 | 7 | 27 |
Employed health full-time equivalent (FTE) staff (median) | 24 | 5 | 14 |
Total number of organisations | 152 | 63 | 215 |
Source: OSR data collection.
Note: For more information on each collection, including definitions and other information to aid in interpreting data, see Technical notes.
Maternal and child health organisations
A small number of organisations receive funding solely to provide specific maternal and child health programs or services – such as those within a hospital or a broader health organisation. These are referred to as maternal and child health organisations in this report.
Because they are significantly different from other OSR-reporting organisations, in both their funding and reporting requirements, these organisations are generally excluded from the OSR results in this report unless otherwise noted.
Because the maternal and child health indicators in the nKPI collection are directly relevant to these organisations, and their objectives align with those of other nKPI-reporting organisations delivering maternal and child health services, these organisations are included in the nKPI results in this report.
For more on this, see Interpreting OSR data and Interpreting nKPI data. For the number of primary health care and maternal and child health organisations reporting to each collection by period, see Technical notes.