The national Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs) are 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.
The nKPIs are collected for Indigenous regular clients of each organisation twice a year in:
- July—covering the period 1 January–30 June
- January—covering the period 1 July–31 December.
Indigenous regular clients
Organisations collecting nKPIs 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 provided to the nKPIs.
For the purposes of the nKPIs, an Indigenous regular client is defined as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australian 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 nKPIs cover 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 nKPIs 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 nKPIs capture only a subset of the important work that organisations do each day. Data from this collection 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.
This chapter presents results for each nKPI, providing an indication of areas where further investigation and improvements might be needed. Where possible, trends over time are presented. However, the number of organisations included varies over time and by indicator for each period depending on the quality of the data submitted. This may limit comparability over time for some purposes (see Technical notes for more information).
The following tables show key trends over time 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. Standards for general practices. 5th edn. East Melbourne, Vic: RACGP, 2020.