Public dental waiting times NMDS 2022–

Identifying and definitional attributes

• Health, Standard 08/02/2023

The purpose of the Public dental waiting times national minimum data set (PDWT NMDS) is to describe the information that must be collected to calculate the waiting times for two time periods in the treatment pathway for public dental services in Australia:

• the time between the date a person is placed on a waiting list and the date they are offered dental care; and
• the time between the date a person is placed on a waiting list and the date they receive dental care.

In the PDWT NMDS, person includes all persons eligible for their state or territory public dental scheme, who were aged 18 years or over when they were placed on a general or prosthetic public dentistry waiting list for the purpose of receiving treatment.

The PDWT NMDS includes:

• all people specified above with a listing date for dental care within the collection period
• all people specified above with a date of offer of dental care within the collection period
• all people specified above with a date of first dental visit within the collection period.

The PDWT NMDS excludes:

• people who access their local public clinic but pay full price and are not eligible for their state or territory's public dental service
• people who are treated under jurisdictional priority client schemes.

In the PDWT NMDS, treatment means any event consisting of the provision of dental care resulting from a person being placed on a public dental waiting list and funded under a state or territory public dental scheme. Only treatments received after a person is placed on a public dental waiting list should be recorded.

Excluded treatments are:

• treatment paid for in full by the person receiving the treatment
• treatment provided by practitioners funded from outside of the public dental health sector, e.g. treatment provided by general practitioners (GPs)
• treatments which do not result in removal from a waiting list, such as:
  • – relief of pain that does not satisfy other dental treatment needs
  • – emergency treatment that does not satisfy other dental treatment needs
  • – where a person is on a general care or denture care waiting list, consultations to determine future care that do not result in the removal from the list

A public dental waiting list episode ends:

• at the date of offer of dental care, if this is the last recorded date; or
• at the date of first dental visit.

All dental services funded by the state or territory government should be included unless otherwise noted.

Collection and usage attributes

A public dental waiting list episode.

This is an administrative collection and information is derived from client records.

The collection period is the twelve month financial year, i.e. the twelve months ending 30 June.

Glossary items

Glossary terms that are relevant to this National minimum data set are included here:

Gender

Geographic indicator

Sex

Source and reference attributes

Oral Health Monitoring Group 2015. Healthy mouths healthy lives: Australia's national oral health plan 2015-2024. Viewed 30 August 2022, https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/healthy-mouths-healthy-lives-australias-national-oral-health-plan-2015-2024

Relational attributes