Palliative care services in Australia

Non-admitted Patient Care Data Collections

Data on non-admitted patient palliative care are sourced from the Non-admitted Patient Care Data Collections, which includes information on non-admitted patient service events provided by public hospitals, Local Hospital Networks, and other public hospital services, managed by state or territory health authorities in Australia. The latest available data at the date of publication of this report is 2023–24. A complete Non-admitted patient care data collections: Data Quality Statements 2023–24 [PDF 403KB] is available online.

The Non-admitted Patient Care Data Collections include both aggregated clinic-level and episode-level details, providing insights into outpatient clinic activities, individual and group service events, and the various funding sources of these services. This report only includes the episode-level data for palliative care-related service events, which is based on data in the National Non-admitted Patient Database (NNAP(el)D). The NNAP(el)D is collected under the Non-admitted patient National Best Endeavours Data Set (NAP NBEDS) and includes information on:

• type of outpatient clinic 
• type of care provided
• selected patient characteristics
• selected characteristics for the services events, such as service request source, delivery mode and setting
• funding source of service events.

Note that for NNAP(el)D, counts represent each service event, not each patient. Therefore, patients who receive more than one non-admitted patient service event in the reporting period will have more than one record in the NNAP(el)D.

The scope of NAP NBEDS is non-admitted patient service events involving non-admitted patients provided by:

• public hospitals
• Local Hospital Networks
• other public hospital services that are managed by a state or territory health authority and are included in the General list of in-scope public hospital services, which have been developed under the National Health Reform Agreement (2011).

The scope of NAP NBEDS excludes:

• non-admitted services provided to admitted patients and emergency department patients
• the community mental health care services 
• the service events which are delivered as non-clinical care (such as home-based care).

The Tier 2 Non-Admitted Services Classification (Tier 2) categorises a hospital’s non-admitted services into classes which are generally based on the nature of the service provided and the type of clinician providing the service. Tier 2 is classified to one of the groups below based on the predominant nature of the service provided:

• Procedures: used to capture clinics where health care professionals provide procedural based health services. These may include COVID-19 vaccination, treatment chemotherapy, radiation therapy, renal dialysis and so on. 
• Medical consultation services: used to capture clinics where the nature of the medical consultation means it is typically provided by a medical practitioner, a nurse practitioner or an endorsed midwife practitioner. In medical clinics, it is assumed that there may also be input from allied health personnel and/or clinical nurse specialists. These services include COVID-19 response, pain management, general practice and primary care, paediatric medicine and surgery, and so on.
• Diagnostic services: used to capture clinics that provide diagnostic services as inputs to the health care services of other non-admitted clinics. The services include COVID-19 response diagnostics, Medical Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computerised Tomography (CT), mammography screening, clinical measurement and so on.
• Allied health or clinical nurse specialist intervention services: used to capture clinics where there are allied health personnel and/or clinical nurse specialists providing the majority of services in a clinic. The services include COVID-19 response, aged care assessment, primary health care, rehabilitation, social work and so on.

A full list of services in each Tier 2 class in the reporting period can be found in the Tier 2 National Index 2023-24.

Patient episodes are then allocated to classes based on the predominant specialisation, which may be formed around the clinician, patient condition, patient population group or type of care.

Identifying non-admitted patient palliative care

Two data items – ‘care type’ and ‘Tier 2 Outpatient Clinic type’ – capture information indicating palliative care has been provided to a patient.

Coding ‘palliative care’ as a ‘care type’

A ‘care type’ is recorded in the NNAP(el) database and assigned for each non-admitted patient service event. It describes the type of care provided at a non-admitted patient service event. As such, a patient can be counted as multiple non-admitted patient service events in one day, provided that every visit meets each of the criteria in the service event definition.

In this report, the ‘care type’ recorded as ‘palliative care’ (primary palliative care service events) refers to non-admitted patient care with a recorded care type of palliative care. These services may include medical consultations for palliative care, developmental disabilities, general medicine, medical and radiation oncology; allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions for palliative care, nutrition/dietetics, Geriatric Evaluation and Management (GEM) and oncology; and treatment chemotherapy, treatment radiation therapy, minor surgical and minor medical procedures.

Coding ‘palliative care’ as a ‘Tier 2 Outpatient Clinic type’

In addition to the information on the provision of palliative care collected via the ‘care type’ item, information on palliative care is also recorded in the NNAPC(agg)D and NNAP(el) database under ‘Tier 2 Outpatient Clinic Type’. Tier 2 categorises hospital’s non-admitted services into classes based on the clinician and the service provided (IHACPA 2023). 

In this report, the Tier 2 Non-Admitted Services Definitions Manual 2023–24 was used to identify services related to palliative care, including:

• Medical consultations for palliative care (coded as 20.13 for palliative care): non-admitted patient care with a recorded Tier 2 as palliative care in medical consultations. These consultations can be categorised as palliative care, rehabilitation care or other care by care type.
• Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions for palliative care (coded as 40.35 for palliative care): non-admitted patient care recorded as Tier 2 palliative care in allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions. These interventions can be categorised as palliative care or rehabilitation care by care type.

For more information, see IHACPA website.

Coverage

Each year the collection increasingly reports on episode-level data, however, not all data suppliers are able to report data in this format. In 2023–24, 90% of non-admitted patient service events were recorded at the episode-level. The data presented in this report therefore is likely to underestimate the counts of all non-admitted patient service events for palliative-care delivered in Australia. There are variations among states and territories in admission practices and the types of services provided for non-admitted patients through hospitals (AIHW 2017). This must be considered when interpreting non-admitted patient data. 

Note that due to the evolving scope of the non-admitted patient care data collections, reporting on time series data are not recommended (AIHW 2025b). 

Further information

Comprehensive hospital statistics from the Non-admitted Patient Care Data Collections, including further information about these collections, are released by AIHW on an annual basis in Non-admitted patients (AIHW 2025a). Metadata information for the Non-admitted Patient Care data for the reporting period is published in the AIHW’s online metadata registry – Non-admitted patient care aggregate NBEDS 2024-25 and Non-admitted patient NBEDS 2024-25.