National best practice guidelines for collecting Indigenous status in health data sets

All clients of health services should be asked if they are of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the process of routine data collection. Despite improvements in recent years, there have been continuing problems in establishing and maintaining standard practice in the collection of Indigenous status, resulting in the under-identification of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in key national health data sets. These guidelines have been developed to ensure the standard Indigenous status question is asked correctly and consistently of all clients of health services, and that this information is correctly recorded. Limit of 5 copies.