National Health Workforce Data Set: medical practitioners 2011: National Health Workforce Data Set, 2011; Data Quality Statement
Data Quality Statement Attributes
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Data Quality Statement |
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METEOR identifier: | 510913 |
Registration status: | AIHW Data Quality Statements, Standard 24/01/2013 |
Data quality | |
Data quality statement summary: | Summary of key issues The National Health Workforce Data Set (NHWDS): medical practitioners 2011 contains information on the demographics, employment characteristics, primary work location and work activity of all medical practitioners in Australia who renewed their medical registration with the Medical Board of Australia via the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS) introduced on 1 July 2010. This is the second publication on medical practitioners from the new national registration scheme. The data set comprises registration (including demographic) information provided by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and workforce details obtained by the Medical Workforce Survey. The survey instrument varies significantly in some areas from previous years, but is now nationally consistent. The NHWDS: medical practitioner 2011 is also more complete than the NHWDS: medical practitioner 2010. The major issues with data quality for the NHWDS: medical practitioner 2011 include:
Description The NHWDS: medical practitioner 2011 is a combination of data collected through the medical practitioner registration renewal process. Medical practitioners are required to renew their registration with the Medical Board of Australia through the NRAS, either online via the AHPRA website or using a paper form provided by AHPRA. The majority of medical practitioners are due to renew their registrations on 30 September each year. Limited and provisional registration renewals occur on an anniversary basis. This is an individual practitioner anniversary of when the practitioner last registered/renewed. Apart from limited and provisional registrations, medical practitioners can renew their registration either online via the AHPRA website or by using a paper form provided by the AHPRA. For initial registration, medical practitioners must use a paper form and provide supplementary supporting documentation. Limited and provisional registration renewals are done using paper forms. This information is referred to as 'registration data'. Data collected include demographic information such as age, sex, country of birth; and details of health qualification(s) and registration status (see http://www.medicalboard.gov.au/Registration/Types.aspx, select link to Registration type then Registration form).
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Institutional environment: | The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is a major national agency set up by the Australian Government under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 to provide reliable, regular and relevant information and statistics on Australia’s health and welfare. It is an independent statutory authority established in 1987, governed by a management Board, and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health and Ageing portfolio.
One of the main functions of the AIHW is to work with the states and territories to improve the quality of administrative data and, where possible, to compile national datasets based on data from each jurisdiction, to analyse these data sets and disseminate information and statistics.
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Timeliness: | The NHWDS: medical practitioners is produced annually from the national registration renewal process, conducted from early August to 30 September each year.
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Accessibility: | Results from the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 are published in the Medical workforce 2011 report. The report, workforce survey questionnaire, user guide to the data set and additional detailed tables are available on the AIHW website at http://www.aihw.gov.au/workforce-publications/ (select link to Medical workforce 2011). Users can request data not available online or in reports via the Communications, Media and Marketing Unit on (02) 6244 1032 or via email to [email protected]. Requests that take longer than half an hour to compile are charged for on a cost-recovery basis. Access to the master unit record file may be requested through the AIHW Ethics Committee. |
Interpretability: | Information to aid in the interpretation of the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 may be found in Appendix A of the Medical Workforce 2011 report. The report is based on this data set. See ‘Accessibility’ for details. |
Relevance: | Scope and coverage The NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 contains registration details of all registered medical practitioners in Australia at 30 September 2011. edical practitioners are required by law to be registered with the Medical Board of Australia and must complete the formal registration renewal form(s) to practise in Australia. This is the compulsory component of the renewal process.
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Accuracy: | Response rates and mode The NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 contains registration details of all registered medical practitioners in Australia at 30 September 2011.
Registration data from the NRAS Some data items collected as part of the previous AIHW Medical Labour Force Survey, such as date of birth, sex and specialty of practice, are now data items collected as part of the registration and renewal process. However, the data for some of these items are incomplete due to the data being migrated from previous jurisdictional registration systems. The NRAS allows a medical practitioner to record more than one specialty, with up to seven specialties recorded in 2011. However, the National Law does not require or enable practitioners to identify their primary speciality. The non-identification of a specialist's main sub-specialty of practice also means headcounts are not possible. To address this issue, AIHW, in cooperation with HWA, have allocated a primary specialty based on the recorded set of primary specialties held by each medical practitioner.
Workforce Survey 2011 sample All registered medical practitioners are provided a form upon renewal of their registration each year. Some initial registrants may not receive a survey if they are not required to renew within the target period. Workforce Survey 2011 design In 2011, the online survey questionnaire did not include electronic sequencing of questions to automatically guide the respondent to the next appropriate question based on previous responses. This resulted in a number of inconsistent responses. For instance, respondents not correctly following the sequencing instructions for the employment questions may be assigned to an incorrect workforce status or not assigned a status due to incomplete data.
Inconsistencies between workforce survey and registration data There were a number of inconsistencies between the data sourced from the NRAS and the workforce survey data. There were many records where the response to the survey question regarding temporary residency visa was inconsistent with migrated registration data from state and territory medical boards/councils for citizenship and residency status (which themselves were occasionally inconsistent).
Structure and format of data items Due to unstructured data entry formats, a number of items in the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 which required a numeric value contained text string responses. Where possible, these were recoded to the appropriate numeric value, but this was not possible in all instances. For example, for a number of records, Postcode of principal practice contained values other than valid post codes, such as text strings, overseas postal identifiers. Conversely, suburb of main job information contained invalid suburb names, 4-digit codes resembling postcodes and even complete street addresses. These issues are complicated where people reported inconsistent combinations of working in particular Australian states, postcodes similar to Australian postcodes, and suburbs that were clearly not in Australia—for example, in Auckland, New Zealand. Where state and postcode information did not agree, the suburb was used to look up a postcode and this was used to decide which of the two were more likely to be correct. Overseas locations had their postcode manually set to 9998 for statistical purposes. |
Coherence: | Workforce Survey 2011—coherence with previous data AIHW published Medical workforce 2010 on 28 March 2012, which was the first release of data derived from the new NRAS. At this time, it was known and reported that there were issues with the 2010 survey data, especially the lack of data from Queensland and Western Australia. Queensland and Western Australia were subsequently removed from the workforce tables in the 2010 publication, thus comparisons with the 2011 data should be undertaken with caution. Once the 2011 medical data were supplied, it became apparent that there were large differences between the 2010 and 2011 numbers of registered medical practitioners. When further investigated, this was found to be caused by differences in the way these data were stored and extracted from the AHPRA databases. As a result, the medical data were re-extracted and supplied in October 2012 for both 2010 and 2011 using the same methods.
owever, the NRAS does not identify main specialty. There have also been significant changes in the classification of categories of specialty of practice used in the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 compared with that used in the previous AIHW Medical Labour Force Survey reports. There are 23 valid legally defined specialties in the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 (for example, physician, surgery), while there were over 50 detailed specialties published in the previous AIHW Medical Labour Force Survey reports. Thus, comparison of 2011 specialty data with results from AIHW Medical Labour Force Survey should be treated with caution.
The three employment-related questions in the Medical Workforce Survey 2011 questionnaire are nationally consistent. This is an improvement on the previous AIHW Medical Labour Force Survey where the questionnaire varied across jurisdictions, including the questions and definitions of data items collected. However, the redesigned question on working status no longer includes in its explanation of ‘Working in medicine’ a description of work activity/hours; that is ‘worked for a total of one hour or more last week in a job or business (including own business) for pay, commission, payment in kind or profit; or hours usually worked but away from work on leave, or rostered off last week’. Inclusion of the additional explanation may have avoided confusion for medical practitioners who worked in medicine during the survey reference week but in a voluntary capacity.
Due to the differences in data collection methods, including survey design and questionnaire, it is recommended that comparisons between workforce data in the NHWDS: medical practitioners 2011 and AIHW Labour Force Survey data before 2010 be made with caution. Workforce Survey 2011—coherence with other data sources The ABS Census of Population and Housing, conducted every 5 years, is the other main source of data on medical practitioner numbers in Australia. The Census is self-enumerated by respondents and therefore the numbers of people who report their occupation as medical practitioners is not easily comparable with numbers from the NRAS or estimates from the Medical Workforce Survey. The results of the 2011 Census include data on occupations classified using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations revision 1 (ANZSCO) (ABS 2009). Occupation data are collected for the main job held during the week before Census night.
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Source and reference attributes | |
Submitting organisation: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |
Steward: | Australian Institute of Health and Welfare |