The PDWT NMDS enables reporting on the length of time that patients wait for public dental care in Australia, and the characteristics of patients who receive care or who were listed for care in a reference period.
Collection details
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Temporal coverage
from 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2019
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Geographical coverage
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Data availability
- Publications
- Client specified tables on request which may be subject to data provider approval (charges apply)
- Restricted unit record access subject to Ethics Committee approval and/or the agreement of all relevant data custodians in all states and territories (charges may apply).
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Data scope
The purpose of the Public dental waiting times national minimum data set (PDWT NMDS) is to describe the information that must be collected to calculate the waiting times for two time periods in the treatment pathway for public dental services in Australia:
- The time between the date a person is placed on a waiting list and the date they are offered dental care; and
- The time between the date a person is placed on a waiting list and the date they receive dental care.
In this data collection, person includes all persons eligible for their state or territory public dental scheme, who were aged 18 years or over when they were placed on a general or prosthetic public dentistry waiting list for the purpose of receiving treatment.
The data collection includes:
- all people specified above with a listing date for dental care within the collection period
- all people specified above with a date of offer of dental care within the collection period
- all people specified above with a date of first dental visit within the collection period.
The data collection excludes:
- people who access their local public clinic but pay full price and are not eligible for their state or territory's public dental service
- people who are treated under jurisdictional priority client schemes.
In this data collection, treatment means any event consisting of the provision of dental care resulting from a person being placed on a public dental waiting list and funded under a public dental scheme of their state or territory. Only treatments received after a person is placed on a public dental waiting list should be recorded.
Excluded treatments are:
- treatment paid for in full by the person receiving the treatment
- treatment provided by practitioners funded from outside of the public dental health sector, e.g. treatment provided by General Medical Practitioners (GPs)
- treatments which do not result in removal from a waiting list, such as: ◦relief of pain that does not satisfy other dental treatment needs
- emergency treatment that does not satisfy other dental treatment needs
- where a person is on a general care or denture care waiting list, consultations to determine future care that do not result in the removal from the list
A public dental waiting list episode ends:
- at the date of offer of dental care, if this is the last recorded date; or
- at the date of first dental visit.
All dental services funded by the state or territory government should be included unless otherwise noted.
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Methodology
Admin data
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Metadata information and data quality statement (DQS)
Public dental waiting times NMDS 2013
National Healthcare Agreement: PI 13–Waiting times for public dentistry, 2017
Public Dental Waiting Times METeOR data source entry
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External links and information
A discussion of public dental waiting times information in Australia: 2013–14 to 2016–17
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Contact
hpis@aihw.gov.au
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