Introduction
Medicare-subsidised services provided in non-hospital settings enable eligible Australians to use a wide range of general practice, diagnostic, allied health, specialist, and nursing and Aboriginal health worker services at no or partial cost. This data update provides the latest 2019–20 and 2020-21 non-hospital Medicare-subsidised service use data, exploring trends in the use of these services.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian Government introduced a range of Medicare-subsidised services from March 2020. This data release contains significant updates to the mapping of Medicare groups and subgroups, as many new items have been introduced due to the COVID-19 response, as well as the black summer bushfires.
The Technical information and Technical notes sections of this report provide details about the data source, scope, limitations and measures included.