Summary
Non-admitted patient care includes emergency occasions of service for non-admitted patients, outpatient care (including specialist clinics) and other non-admitted patient care (such as the dispensing of medication, provision of diagnostic procedures, district nursing and community health services).
How much non-admitted patient activity was reported?
In 2013-14, about 46 million non-admitted patient occasions of service were reported by 558 public hospitals. They included more than 6 million emergency occasions of service, almost 18 million occasions of service for outpatient care and 22 million occasions of service for other non-admitted patient care.
Emergency services
Between 2009-10 and 2013-14, the number of emergency occasions of service increased by an average of 2.6% each year (after adjusting for the missing data for Victoria). The Australian Capital Territory reported the highest average annual increase of 4.2%.
Public acute group A hospitals and Principal referral and women's and children's hospitals accounted for more than half of all emergency occasions of service reported (31% and 28%, respectively).
Outpatient care services
Between 2009-10 and 2013-14, the number of occasions of service for outpatient care increased by 2.5% on average each year (after adjusting for the missing data for Victoria).
In 2013-14, summary clinic-level information on outpatient care was provided for almost 26 million service events by 357 public hospitals. Detailed episode-level data were available for more than 10 million (39%) of these service events.
In 2013-14, about 42% of outpatient care service events (clinic-level) were for Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions and 34% were for Medical consultations.
The most common outpatient care service for Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist interventions was Midwifery and maternity (1.7 million service events) and the most common Medical consultation was for Orthopaedics (960,000 service events).
In 2013-14, about 56% of outpatient care service events (at the episode-level) were for females and 30% of service events were for people aged 65 and over.
About 4% of outpatient care service events were for Indigenous Australians.
People living in Major cities accounted for about 70% of outpatient care service events.
Other non-admitted patient services
Between 2009-10 and 2013-14, the number of occasions of service for other non-admitted patient care increased by 3.2% on average each year (after adjusting for the missing data for Victoria).
In 2013-14, about 37% of individual occasions of service reported for other non-admitted patient care were for Pathology, 22% were for Pharmacy and 16% were for Community health services.