Health services

Access relative to need

Measuring access to health services is complex. ‘Access’ can include:

• physical access (whether health services with sufficient capacity are located within a certain distance or drive time from where a person lives)
• affordability
• cultural acceptability.

The AIHW has modelled how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’s local access to primary health care services (Indigenous-specific primary health care services and other GP-based primary health services) varies geographically across Australia (AIHW forthcoming, see also AIHW 2014, 2015). This modelling can be used to identify areas where access to primary health care services appears to be relatively poor.

Physical access to services was modelled with reference to:

• Indigenous-specific primary health care services, based on drive time to services
• GP services in general, based on drive time to services, the capacity of GP services, the size of local populations, and their per person need for primary health care.

The need for primary health care was estimated using demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the local population (AIHW forthcoming).

This work shows that, overall, Australian Government-funded Indigenous-specific primary health care services appear to be well positioned relative to the geographic distribution of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, and of other GP services. But there are several areas where the Indigenous population has potentially limited access to both Indigenous-specific services and GP services in general.

In total, 29 medium-sized areas were estimated to have at least 200 Indigenous Australians with no Indigenous-specific primary health care services within one hour’s drive and relatively poor access to GP services in general. These areas are highlighted in orange (300 to 900 people with poor access) and yellow (200 to 299 people) in Map 2 below (with other areas shown in grey). The areas are Statistical Areas Level 2 (SA2s). Table HS 3 shows the number of areas in each state/territory and remoteness classification.

Table HS 3: Number of areas with potentially poor access to primary health care services, by state/territory and predominant remoteness classification, 2018