Medical Business Survey

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    NAME OF ORGANISATION
    Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

    OVERVIEW
    As part of its ongoing program of collections from the services sector of the economy, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) conducted two surveys of the private medical practice industry in respect of 1994/95. It is the first time that the ABS has conducted such surveys of this industry.

    The first survey was a sample of medical practitioners selected from the Health Insurance Commission's Medicare Provider File. The second survey was of private practice medical businesses (and their related administrative service businesses) which were identified from the first survey, classified to the following classes of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) :

    • Class 8621 - General Practice Medical Services;
    • Class 8622 - Specialist Medical Services; and
    • Class 8631 - Pathology Services (businesses mainly operating pathology laboratories).

    PURPOSE
    The primary purpose of the survey was to provide the fundamental base line data necessary to understand the nature of the industry, to enable comparison with other industries and to provide a benchmark for measuring change over time.

    SCOPE
    The scope of the survey was all private medical businesses primarily offering general medical services and specialist medical services. In terms of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), these businesses would be classified to class 8621- GENERAL PRACTICE MEDICAL SERVICES and 8622 - SPECIALIST MEDICAL SERVICES. Administrative service businesses providing dedicated services to these businesses were also included.

    The scope also included pathology laboratory businesses who provided a pathology service in which human tissue, human fluids or human body products are subjected to analysis for the purposes of prevention, diagnosis or treatment of disease in human beings and included any premises from which a service was conducted (this definition is based on the definition of a pathology service as specified in the Pathology Services Accreditation Act 1984: Act no. 10083/1984).

    Government departments, hospitals, nursing homes, community health centres, universities and businesses predominantly providing veterinary pathology laboratory services were excluded from the scope of this survey.

    COVERAGE

    In order to obtain a population for the Medical Practices survey, a survey of medical practitioners was conducted during 2002 using a sample of medical practitioners selected from the Health Insurance Commission's Medicare Provider File (HIMPF) (Collection ID 1962). Results of this survey were published in Private Medical Practitioners, 2002, cat. no. 8689.0.

    The population used for businesses undertaking pathology services was a listing supplied from the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA). Businesses on this list were accredited with NATA, have received a NATA category of GX, GY, S or U (Extract from NPAAC Guideline 'Requirements for Supervision of Pathology Laboratories', 1999) and would have received more than 50% of their income from fee for service medical income. Government departments, hospitals, universities, and businesses predominantly providing veterinary pathology laboratory services were excluded from this survey.

    DATA DETAIL

    Conceptual framework
    The Private Medical Practitioners Survey was a two stage survey, the first survey was a sample of medical practitioners selected from the Health Insurance Commission's Medicare Provider File. The second survey was of private practice medical businesses ( and their related administrative service businesses) which were identified from the first survey.

    Main outputs
    The publication for the first survey includes number of private medical practitioners, their basic demographics like age & gender, qualifications, hours worked and number of consultations.

    The second publication contains the data collected from medical businesses which include counts of businesses and practices, employment, selected income and expenses, profitability, size of medical practices and performance ratios

    Information from both surveys is available by state as well.

    More detailed information from both surveys is available from the ABS on request.

    Classifications
    The private medical practice industry is defined in terms of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) as:

    Class 8621- General Practice Medical Services; consisting of businesses of registered medical practitioners ( including such units as medical clinics and group practices) mainly engaged in providing general practice services; and

    Class 8622 - Specialist Medical Services; consisting of businesses of registered medical practitioners mainly engaged in providing specialist medical services, other than pathology services.

    Other concepts (summary)
    Not applicable

    GEOGRAPHIC DETAIL
    Australia
    New South Wales
    Victoria
    Queensland
    South Australia
    Western Australia
    Tasmania
    Northern Territory
    ACT
    Part of State Metropolitan
    Part of State Extra-Metropolitan
    Other (specify below)

    Comments and/or Other Regions
    General Practice data will also be produced by the RRMA classification. The Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Areas (RRMA) Classification has been used to classify the geographical location of medical practitioners according to their main private practice address. The RRMA classification was originally developed in 1994 by the former departments of Primary Industry & Energy and Human Services & Health. The original RRMA classification assigned locations to seven categories according to geographic boundaries based on the 1991 population census. An updated version of the RRMA classification (obtained from the Department of Health and Aged Care) is based on 1996 postcodes and has been used to produce estimates for the Medical Practitioners Survey. For the purposes of this publication the RRMA categories 1–3, 4–5 and 6–7 have been collapsed to form 'Metropolitan', 'Rural' and 'Remote' categories respectively.

    The seven classes of geographic location are listed below.

    1. Capital cities consist of the State and Territory capital cities.
    2. Other metropolitan centres consist of one or more statistical subdivisions that have an urban centre of population of 100,000 or more.
    3. Large rural centres are statistical local areas where most of the population reside in urban centres of population of 25,000 to 99,999.
    4. Small rural centres are statistical local areas in rural zones containing urban centres of population between 10,000 and 24,999.
    5. Other rural areas are the remaining statistical areas within the rural zone.
    6. Remote centres are statistical local areas in the remote zone containing urban centres of population of 5,000 or more.
    7. Other remote areas are the remaining areas within the remote zone.

    COLLECTION FREQUENCY
    Adhoc

    Frequency comments
    Not applicable

    COLLECTION HISTORY
    This is the first time the collection has been undertaken therefore no past history exists.

    DATA AVAILABILITY
    Yes

    Data availability comments
    Data available from publications:
    Private Medical Practice Industry, Australia (ABS Cat. No. 8685.0)
    Private Medical Practitioners, Australia (ABS Cat. No. 8689.0)


    DATE OF LAST UPDATE FOR THIS DOCUMENT
    27/10/2005 03:27 PM