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HEALTH AND DISABILITY STATISTICS

OBJECTIVES

The Health and Disability Program provides statistical leadership to inform priorities for improving health outcomes and supporting all people to actively participate in society. Information produced by the program includes statistics relating to health status (including causes of death); health-related services; patient experiences; disability; health risk factors and impacts on sub-groups within the population.

Statistics on health and disability describe an important aspect of wellbeing, which can impact on people’s capacity to participate in the labour force, and more broadly in the community. Changes in the levels of health measures, such as health conditions, risk factors, and disability, can inform both the development of interventions for prevention and care, and the need for related services over time. These statistics support the policy development, program delivery and evaluation of key government and non-government agencies involved in health, community and family services. They provide information on the impacts of programs and service provision, and can be used to assess areas of unmet need. They are widely used in research related to health and community issues.

Clients of the program include Australian government agencies including the Departments of Health and Social Services; the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; the National Health Performance Authority; state and territory government agencies; academic and research institutions; social welfare organisations providing health and disability services and the general public.


OUTPUTS

The program produces a range of outputs including: frameworks and standards; statistics, microdata and associated metadata; information/ technical papers; guides; and analytical articles.

Specifically, the outputs of the program include:

• information on the health status of the population which focuses on particular conditions, risk factors outcomes and population groups
• information on causes of death based on the International Classification of Diseases - Version 10 published annually in Causes of Death, Australia (cat. no. 3303.0)
• information on the interaction of health services and their clients through the Patient Experience Surveys, published in Patient Experiences in Australia (cat. no. 4839.0)
• information on the structure and operations of the Private Hospital Sector through the Private Hospitals Establishments Collection, published in Private Hospitals, Australia (cat no. 4390.0)
• information on the nature and extent of disability and associated needs for care and support, as well as the circumstances of carers
• provision of expertise, advice and data in supporting performance monitoring for a range of government activities
• advice and contributions to key government advisory groups on health and disability information
• an extensive range of microdata based products including TableBuilder and Confidentialised Unit Record File datasets.

• analyse the results from the 2013-14 Patient Experience Survey - due November 2014
• undertake a review of long term health data needs with key clients - due 2014-15
• finalise and release biomedical, physical activity and nutrition results from the Australian Health Survey, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wave - due 2014-15
• develop and conduct the 2014-15 National Health Survey - due April 2016
• redevelop and undertake the 2015 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers - results due late 2016
• contribute to the development and implementation of the World Health Organisations’ International Classification of Diseases - Version 11, for use in mortality and morbidity coding in Australia - ongoing
• support policy analysts and health researchers’ needs by identifying key information gaps and working together with key agencies to create new data sources to fill those gaps – ongoing
• contribute to international initiatives to improve the comparability of disability statistics - ongoing
• facilitate the release of causes of death micro-data collaboration with the Australian Coordinating Registry and State and Territory Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriage - ongoing
• investigate possibilities to bring together datasets where opportunities exist to better inform policy makers and researchers - ongoing.