Non-admitted patient care 2017–18: Australian hospital statistics

Non-admitted patient services are funded through a range of channels. For the clinic‑level data provided for the NNAPC(agg)D, 4 funding sources could be assigned:

• Medicare Benefits Scheme
• Department of Veterans’ Affairs
• Compensable—which includes:
  • worker’s compensation
  • motor vehicle third party personal claim
  • other compensation.
• Other—which includes:
  • health service budget (including Reciprocal Health Care Agreements, or where no charge was raised due to hospital decision). This category includes both state/territory and Australian Government contributions
  • other hospital or public authority (contracted care)
  • department of Defence
  • correctional facilities
  • private health insurance
  • self-funded
  • other funding source
  • not known.

For 2017–18, the Other category was reported for 86% of non-admitted patient service events, Medicare Benefits Scheme (MBS) funded 13% of service events, and fewer than 1% were funded by either the Department of Veterans’ Affairs or Compensable sources (Table 11).

For Queensland, MBS-funded non-admitted patient activity for doctors practising right of private practice were not included in the data provided to the NNAPC(agg)D as these patients are not considered by Queensland to be patients of the hospital.

Funding source varied across the clinic types, and among states and territories. For example, the proportion of service events funded by the MBS:

• in Procedural clinics ranged from 18% in New South Wales to 82% in the Australian Capital Territory
• in Medical consultation clinics ranged from 4% in Western Australia to 41% in Victoria
• in Diagnostic services ranged from 3% in the Northern Territory to 52% in Tasmania
• in Allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics ranged from 0.1% in the Northern Territory to 4.7% in Tasmania.

See Tables 4.1, 4.2 and S4.1 to S4.5 for caveat information related to these data. Available to download in the Data section.