Access to eye health services among indigenous Australians: An area level analysis

Abstract

Background: This project is a community-level study of equity of access to eye health services for Indigenous Australians. Methods. The project used data on eye health services from multiple sources including Medicare Australia, inpatient and outpatient data and the National Indigenous Eye Health Survey. The analysis focused on the extent to which access to eye health services varied at an area level according to the proportion of the population that was Indigenous (very low=0-1.0%, low=1.1-3.0%, low medium=3.1-6.0%, high medium=6.1-10.0%, high=10.1-20.0%, very high=20+%). The analysis of health service utilisation also took into account age, remoteness and the Socioeconomic Indices for Area..