The national Key Performance Indicators (nKPI) collection is a set of 24 indicators provided by organisations receiving funding under the Indigenous Australians’ Health Programme (IAHP) to deliver comprehensive and culturally appropriate primary health care services to Indigenous Australians. Some indicators have more than one part (for example, an indicator might be collected by different types of chronic diseases).
Data are supplied on the Indigenous regular clients of each organisation twice a year, with census dates in June and December. The period of data covered varies by indicator. For example, for the June 2020 census date, data provided covers, depending on the indicator:
- 6 months up to the census date, that is, from, 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2020, or
- 12 months up to the census date, that is, from 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, or
- 24 months up to the census date, that is, from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2020, or
- 2, 3 and 5 years up to the census date (for cervical screening only).
Indigenous regular clients
Organisations reporting to the nKPI collection may see a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous clients. Some of these are considered regular clients of the organisation. Only data for Indigenous regular clients are included in the nKPI collection.
For the purposes of the nKPI collection, an Indigenous regular client is defined as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person who has an active medical record—that is, who attended a particular primary health care organisation at least 3 times in the previous 2 years. This definition is consistent with the RAGCP definition of an active patient (RACGP 2020). See Technical notes and Glossary for more information.
The nKPI collection consists of 15 process-of-care and 9 health-outcome indicators organised under three domains (see Technical notes for a list of indicators by domain and type). While the process-of-care indicators are largely (but not completely) under the control of organisations and indicate good practice in primary health care, health outcomes are influenced by a range of factors known as social determinants (such as education, employment, housing, access to resources, racism) some of which are beyond the immediate control of organisations.
As such, the indicators needs to be viewed in context of the broader environment in which organisations operate and in which the data are collected. In particular, it is important to acknowledge that the indicators capture only a subset of the important work that organisations do each day. Data from this collection, however, can make an important contribution when used by health service providers at the local level to identify opportunities and to measure progress towards achieving change, or when used by policy makers to inform policy decisions.
The following tables show key trends between the June 2017 and June 2020 reporting periods for each indicator. Click on the link to get more information on the associated indicator.
Key: ✔ = improved; ✘ = not improved; ► = no change
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners 2020. Standards for general practices. 5th edition. East Melbourne, Vic: RACGP.