In 2019–20, there were about 247,000 Indigenous-specific health checks provided to about 239,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The minimum time allowed between checks is 9 months, and so people can receive more than 1 health check in a year. Data from the Indigenous primary health care national Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs) data collection suggest that, in spite of only making up about 1.8% of fulltime-equivalent general practitioners (GPs), GPs at Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations conduct nearly half of all Indigenous-specific health checks (AIHW 2020).
Between 2010–11 and 2018–19, the number of Indigenous Australians receiving a health check more than tripled—from about 71,000 to 241,000 patients. Due to the impacts of COVID-19 (AIHW 2020), the number of health check patients dropped slightly in 2019–20 (by about 1% or 2,300 people), ending 8 years of increasing numbers of health checks (Figure 1).