Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people enjoy long and healthy lives.

Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031.

Rates of accessing/utilisation of health services (General practitioner (GP) visits, health assessments (Medicare Benefit 715), chronic disease care items (Team Care arrangement and GP management plan))

There are four measures for this indicator.

Measure 1 is the rate of GP visits, defined as:

Numerator — number of non-referred GP services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Denominator — number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

and is presented as a rate per 1000 people.

Measure 2 is the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific health checks or assessments, by assessment locations (health facility, telehealth and residential aged care), defined as:

Numerator — number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had MBS health checks/assessments that are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific (MBS items 715, 228, 92004, 92016, 93470, 92011, 92023, 93479), by assessment locations

Denominator — number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

and is presented as a rate per 1000 people.

Measure 3 is the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific health checks or assessments, by location of assessment (health facility, telehealth and residential aged care), defined as:

Numerator — number of MBS health checks/assessments that are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific (MBS items 715, 228, 92004, 92016, 93470, 92011, 92023, 93479), by location of assessment

Denominator — number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

and is presented as a rate per 1000 people.

Measure 4 is the rate of chronic disease care items (under Team Care Arrangements (TCAs) and GP Management Plans (GPMPs), defined as:

Numerator — number of MBS services claimed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (separately for TCAs and GPMPs)

Denominator — number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

and is presented as a rate per 1000 people.

National Agreement on Closing the Gap July 2020

30 June 2022

Driver

For all measures, a high or increasing proportion is generally desirable as indicates greater access to services, but access to services should be considered in the context of population need.

Numerator (all measures)

Name: Medicare data

Frequency: Annual

Documentation (links): http://www.mbsonline.gov.au/internet/mbsonline/publishing.nsf/Content/Home

Denominator (all measures)

Name: Estimates and projections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians

Frequency: Annual (data revised on a five-yearly basis)

Documentation: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/estimates-and-projections-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-australians

Numerator (all measures)

Provider name: Department of Health

Provider area: MBS Analytics Section

Denominator (all measures)

Provider name: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Provider area: Demography

Measures 2 and 3

2016-17

Measures 1 and 4

Data not available for reporting against these measures (see Future Reporting below for further information).

Measures 2 and 3

2020-21

Measures 1 and 4

Data not available for these measures (see Future Reporting below for further information).

Measures 2 and 3

State and territory and Australia, by location of assessment

Measures 2 and 3

Numerator divided by Denominator multiplied by 1000

The MBS data does not include services:

• rendered free-of-charge in recognised hospitals
• that qualify for a benefit under the Department of Veterans' Affairs National Treatment Account
• rendered under an entitlement conferred by legislation other than the Health
• Insurance Act
• rendered for insurance or employment purpose
• for health screening
• conducted through state and territory community-controlled health centres

Counting rules

The reference period is the Date-of-Service (DOS), using data processed to June the following year. Any claims processed after the following financial year are not counted. For example, for 2016-17 any claims processed after 30 June 2018 and provided during 2016-17 have not been counted.

Data by geographic location is based on the patient’s geographic location which is determined using their Medicare enrolment address at the DOS. Unallocated patients are included in the Australian total.

GP services are episodes of care and include both physical visits and telehealth services.

Measure 2

Counts of people are reported for the following locations:

• Health facility: MBS item 715 (introduced 1 May 2010) and MBS item 228 (introduced on 1 July 2018).
• Telehealth: MBS items 92004, 92011, 92016 and 92023 (introduced 30 March 2020). MBS items 92016 and 92023 were removed on 30 June 2021.
• Residential Aged Care: MBS items 93470 and 93479 (introduced 10 December 2020)

As a person can have multiple assessments at different assessment locations in a given year, the sum of people across assessment locations may be greater than the total number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had health checks or assessments.

Measure 3

Subtotals are reported by location of health assessment: health facility, telehealth and residential aged care.

MBS data do not give a comprehensive picture of actual service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as some service delivery (particularly in remote areas) is not covered fully under the Medicare system. For example, MBS data do not include services provided in the public health system or under other arrangements that do not attract an MBS claim (for example, some Aboriginal Medical Services/ACCHOs and state/territory health services).

As services for a period can be processed outside of the DOS period, the data for 2020-21 are preliminary with claims processed up to 5 April 2022. The data will be updated with claims processed to June 2022 and become final in the next Dashboard release.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific Residential Aged Care Facility (RACF) items began in 2020-21 and do not have enough volume to be reported on their own so these are combined with the Telehealth items for that year. Before December 10 2020, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in RACF had been able to access non-Indigenous specific health assessments performed by GPs and other medical professionals (OMP).

Data for measures 1 and 4 once the Commonwealth Department of Health approve the HII for use. The Department has advised that the method of identifying Indigenous status in Medicare data is currently transitioning from the Voluntary Indigenous Identifier (VII) to the Health Indigenous Identifier (HII). The Department no longer provides data based on the VII, and the HII is in the process of clearance consultation and validation and not finalised in time for data provision for the June 2022 Dashboard update.

Additional disaggregations required for future reporting:

• Remoteness areas
• Socioeconomic status of the locality
• Gender