Definition
The purpose of the Public dental waiting times data set specification (PDWT DSS) 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 this data collection, 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 data collection 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 data collection 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 this data collection, 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 public dental scheme of their state or territory. 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 Medical 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.
Metadata items in this Data Set Specification
Below is a list of all the components within this Dataset Specification.
Each entry includes the item name, whether the item is optional, mandatory or conditional and the maximum times the item can occur in a dataset.
If the items must occur in a particular order in the dataset, the sequence number is included before the item name.
| Reference | Data Element | Data Type | Length | Inclusion | # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Person: Date of Birth, DDMMYYYY | Date/Time | 8 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person: Sex, Code N | Number | 1 | mandatory | 1 | |
|
Address: Australian Postcode, (Postcode datafile) NNNN
Specific Information:
In the PDWT DSS, this data element refers to the postcode of a person's usual residence ('usual' means 4 or more days per week on average). |
Number | 4 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person—area of usual residence, statistical area level 2 (SA2) code (ASGS 2011) N(9) | String | 9 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person—Australian state/territory identifier, code N | Number | 1 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person: Country of Birth, Code (SACC 2011) NNNN | Number | 4 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person—Indigenous status, code N | Number | 1 | mandatory | 1 | |
| Person—preferred language, code (ASCL 2011) NN{NN} | Number | 4 | mandatory | 1 |
References
National Advisory Committee on Oral Health 2004. Healthy mouths healthy lives: Australia's national oral health plan 2004-2013. Viewed 31 January 2012, <http://www.adelaide.edu.au/oral-health-promotion/resources/public/pdf_files/oralhealthplan.pdf>
This content Based on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare material. Attribution provided as required under the AIHW CC-BY licence.
Related content
| Relation | Count |
|---|---|
| As a numerator in an Indicator | 0 |
| As a denominator in an Indicator | 0 |
| As a disaggregation in an Indicator | 0 |