National use of health checks

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Latest data

In 2023:

  • 28% (or 257,000) of the First Nations population had a health check.
  • Females had higher overall uptake of health checks than males (30% compared with 25%, respectively).
  • Uptake of health checks generally increased with age, peaking at 42% among people aged 65 and over.
    • Notably, males aged 15–34 had lower uptake than males aged 0–14 (around 19% compared with around 26%).
    • Females had considerably higher uptake than males in many age groups, particularly those aged 25–34 (29% of females compared with 18% of males).

Health checks delivered by Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services

Data from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary health care national Key Performance Indicators (nKPIs) data collection suggest that GPs at Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) conduct around 44% of all health checks despite only making up about 2.2% of fulltime-equivalent GPs (see ‘Expanded content’ on the Data page).

Sources: AIHW analysis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific primary health care nKPI data (June 2023), Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data, and National Health Workforce Dataset (2023).

Between 2013 and 2023:

  • Despite a long-term trend of rising health check uptake, there was a considerable fall in uptake between 2020 and 2022, associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • In the most recent years, uptake has lifted, nearly returning to the levels seen before the pandemic.

Reference month

In charts:

  • Data by calendar year are presented as the 12 months ending on 31 December.
  • Data by financial year are presented as the 12 months ending on 30 June.

Figure 1: Use of health checks among First Nations people, by age group, by sex, by reference month, 2013 to 2023 

A set of 4 interactive charts. Refer to table HC01 in data tables. A long description is available below.

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