Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment dental data collection, 2022; Quality Statement
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 781516 |
Registration status: | AIHW Data Quality Statements, Standard 10/10/2023 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | The National Partnership Agreement on Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory (SFNT) was implemented mid–2012 and was replaced by the National Partnership Agreement on Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment (NTRAI) in July 2015, outlining a 10-year commitment to 2023–24. This parnership is funded by the Australian Government and delivered by the Northern Territory Government. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) collects data on the SFNT/NTRAI Oral Health Program (OHP) which includes the delivery of clinical services, tooth extractions under general anaesthesia (July 2012 to December 2014), and a preventive program including the delivery of fissure sealants and full-mouth fluoride varnish (FV) applications. This data collection includes more than 20,000 First Nations children and adolescents who were aged between 0 and 15 and who received oral health services under the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Oral Health Program (SFNT OHP) and, later, under the Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment Oral Health Program (NTRAI OHP). Data collected as part of the SFNT/NTRAI OHP are a by-product of administration of a clinical process. Dental professionals who provide clinical services document the results on standard data collection forms or in a computer-based data collection system, which is then provided to the AIHW for analysis. Summary of key issues
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is an independent corporate Commonwealth entity under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 (AIHW Act), governed by a management Board and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health portfolio. The AIHW is a nationally recognised information management agency. Its purpose is to create authoritative and accessible information and statistics that inform decisions and improve the health and welfare of all Australians. Compliance with confidentiality requirements in the AIHW Act, Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and AIHW’s data governance arrangements ensures that the AIHW is well positioned to release information for public benefit while protecting the identity of individuals and organisations. For further information see the AIHW website www.aihw.gov.au/about-us, which includes details about the AIHW's governance (www.aihw.gov.au/about-us/our-governance) and our role and strategic goals (www.aihw.gov.au/about-us/what-we-do). Data for the NTRAI dental data collection were supplied to the AIHW by the Northern Territory Department of Health (NT DoH), which has been funded to deliver SFNT/NTRAI oral health services. The NT DoH is responsible for strategic leadership and funding; system-wide policy development and planning; and system governance, performance and accountability. For further information see the NT DoH website www.health.nt.gov.au. |
Timeliness: | The data on services delivered are submitted to the AIHW by the NT DoH at the start of each calendar year. The dental data collection contains information on children and young people who received dental services between July 2012 and December 2022. The latest report was published in October 2023, with a reference period of July 2012 to December 2022. Each annual report builds on the previous years' data to produce time trends, and track children and young people as they move through the program. It is expected that future reports will be published on an annual basis by calendar year. |
Accessibility: | Reports are published on the AIHW website and can be downloaded free of charge at www.aihw.gov.au. Supplementary data tables presenting more detailed data accompany each report and these, too, are available on the AIHW website where they can be downloaded free of charge. Permission to obtain unpublished data must be sought from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care and the NT DoH. Additional approvals from relevant Northern Territory ethics committees may be required. The AIHW can provide advice on obtaining the relevant approvals. Requests for unpublished data can be made by contacting the AIHW website. See data on request. A cost-recovery charge may apply to requests that take substantial resources to compile. Depending on the nature of the request, requests for access to unpublished data may require approval from the state and territory data custodians and/or the AIHW Ethics Committee. |
Interpretability: | The reports contain relevant definitions and information about caveats or aspects that readers should be aware of when interpreting the data. Footnotes are included where relevant to provide further details or caveats. Reference material containing information about the programs and data collection accompany each report. Readers are advised to consider all supporting and contextual information to ensure appropriate interpretation of analyses presented by the AIHW. A copy of the SFNT/NTRAI National Partnership Agreement from the Standing Council on Federal Financial Relations is available at federalfinancialrelations.gov.au. |
Relevance: | This data collection covers the period from July 2012 to December 2022 and includes over 20,000 First Nations children and adolescents who were aged between 0 and 15 who received oral health services under the SFNT OHP and, later, under the NTRAI OHP. The children in the data collection are not a random sample of First Nations children and adolescents in the Northern Territory, and therefore, SFNT/NTRAI OHP data may not be representative of the general population of First Nations children in the Northern Territory. Not all dental services provided in the Northern Territory are captured in the SFNT/NTRAI dental database. This data collection only captures oral health services funded through the SFNT/NTRAI OHP. The Northern Territory dental data collection captures data on children and young people who receive oral health services funded through the SFNT/NTRAI. The data include information on the amount of services provided, as well as demographic information and the oral health status of service recipients; the data also allow for comparison of children's oral health status over a time period. The information provided by the data is critical for monitoring oral health services and the oral health status of service recipients. The AIHW SFNT/NTRAI dental data collection captures information on the following components of the SFNT/NTRAI OHP: Clinical services and tooth extractions under general anaesthetic Clinical services include diagnostic services, periodontics (treatment of gums), endodontics (pulp treatments), restorative fillings, bridges and crowns, tooth extractions, orthodontics (dental braces), and prosthetic treatments (replacement of teeth). In the first 3 years of the SFNT OHP there was provision for tooth extractions performed in hospital under general anaesthetic (it is no longer a part of the NTRAI OHP). Data collected includes demographic information about the child (age, sex and community of treatment), information on problems treated, type of clinical management received, and the number of decayed, missing and filled teeth. Preventive services Preventive services include the application of fissure sealants and full-mouth FV. While these services are available to First Nations children under the age of 16 across the Northern Territory, full-mouth FV services are targeted towards children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, and fissure sealant services to children aged 6 to 15 years. Geographic information is based on the area where the service was provided, rather than the community of residence of the child. |
Accuracy: | To obtain de-identified unit record data for the SFNT/ NTRAI dental data collection, consent for sharing information must be obtained from children's families. If children's families do not give consent for their information to be used in de-identified unit record form, only a limited amount of information can be sent to the AIHW. These data are submitted to the AIHW in aggregate form to enable the number of services and, subsequently, the number of children to be counted, but do not contain detailed demographic information, types of treatment received or oral health status. In the first 6 months of the SFNT OHP (July to December 2012), the consent rate to share data with the AIHW was low, at 27% for clinical service recipients, 26% for full-mouth FV recipients, and 22% for fissure sealant recipients; data collected in this period are not representative of all SFNT dental services and service recipients. However, consent rates improved significantly after the initial period for all services in this collection, ranging between around 60% and around 90% in the years since (with year-to-year fluctuations). In 2022, service recipient consent rates were 56% for clinical service visits, 57% for full-mouth fluoride varnish services and 67% for fissure sealant applications. In order to protect privacy, personal information is not provided to the AIHW (for example, the child’s name). Children can be counted only by using a Hospital Registration Number (HRN). There was no missing or incorrect HRN in 2022.
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Coherence: | Oral health program services were originally funded through the Child Health Check Initiative/Closing the Gap (CHCI(CtG)) program, which ran from August 2007 to June 2012. Caution should be taken when comparing the data between these programs due to differences in eligibility criteria for the programs:
Since 2014, there have been changes in the data submitted by the OHS-NT to the AIHW. Apart from basic demographic information, HRN and number of decayed, missing and filled teeth for service recipients, all other data items are no longer submitted. In the past, the AIHW received information about dental problems treated (for example, gum disease). The latest data received by the AIHW include dental procedures undertaken at each episode of dental care, using The Australian Schedule of Dental Services and Glossary, a coding system for dental treatment. Although it is possible to derive the types of dental services provided from this coding system, the information is not sufficient to derive the exact type of dental problem treated. As a result, in the latest 7 reports published in 2018, 2019 (2 reports) and 2021 (2 reports), 2022 and 2023, it was not possible to include the analyses related to the types of dental problems treated that were presented in previous AIHW reports on SFNT oral health services. In the last 4 reports, published in 2021, 2022 and 2023, data on fissure sealant applications reported the number of teeth to which fissure sealants were applied, rather than the number of services in which fissure sealants were applied as in previous reports. |
Data products | |
Implementation start date: | 31/10/2023 |
Source and reference attributes | |
Submitting organisation: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Relational attributes | |
Related metadata references: | Supersedes Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment dental data collection, 2020; Quality Statement AIHW Data Quality Statements, Superseded 28/10/2022 Supersedes Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment dental data collection, 2021; Quality Statement AIHW Data Quality Statements, Superseded 10/10/2023 |