Divisions' Matters

Making Divisions' data work for you

The Primary Health Care Research and Information Service (PHC RIS) is involved in the collection and collation of Divisions Network Reporting on behalf of the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA). Every 12 months Divisions and State Based Organisations are required to provide reports through an on-line tool developed by PHC RIS. Following DoHA approval these reports become publicly available on the PHC RIS website.

You can use the on-line tool to interrogate data within these reports and create charts and conduct searches. You can also filter data by State and Division characteristics.

Using the on-line tool

What data is collected?

Divisions provide information about a number of programs including immunisation, Closing the Gap, allied health and rural health.

Who is this information for?

Anyone working in Divisions, policy or research would benefit from this information.

Who has access to the data?

Anyone! You don't have to be logged in to access the reports. You can explore and use all the tool's features (see features list) without an account.

What's new?

Many features have been added over the last year but the most recent are the charting feature, which will generate a chart based on the filter options you select, and the search function, which now runs searches across the entire on-line system based on the key words you input.

What can I search?

With over 100 Divisions' the search feature will extract text from reports most relevant to your query. By using keywords you can search across entire reports or limit it to individual sections.

How does the charting feature work?

You can filter selected data and have it generated into a line, 2D or 3D graph (Figure 1). For example, by checking Divisions in NSW, NT, SA and TAS and selecting 'PIP practices claiming practice nurse services' for the 2008-2009 reporting period you can display this data in chart form.

Hovering over a plotted area will display a pop-up box which displays the name of the Division and its related data. By
clicking on the data point you can read the Division's explanation of results and a link to the full report.

Figure 1: Generate graphs of NPI data (line chart insert)

Features list

In addition to the functions mentioned above other data display features enable you to view and search:

A list of Divisions and SBOs
Full reports
National Performance Indicator (NPI) data, individually or aggregated (by state, RRMA, etc)
Successes and challenges (Figure 2)
Collaborations (Figure 3)
Executive summaries

Other features include ability to:

Text Search across NPI planning and reporting information
Population statistics
Explore the Mapping tool*
Export data to CSV (log-in required)
Search with organisation or content filter (Figure 4)
View Characteristics by Division and State boundaries, such as:
- General Practice Numbers: eg. size (solo/2-5 GPs/6 or more), type (corporate), with a practice nurse
- Health workforce: eg. Number of GPs (including female, over 55), Number of practice nurses, Number of general practices.

*Relating to the Annual Survey of Divisions

How do I get access?

From the Divisions Network Reporting section of the PHC RIS website: www.phcris.org.au/divisions/

Where do I go for more help ?

For a tutorial on how to use this on-line tool refer to the Divisions Network Reporting homepage on the PHC RIS website. Contact PHC RIS Assist on 1800 025 882

Printed Resource

This information is available in a FREE colour printed fact sheet

Download the PDF [148KB]
Complete our order form to have a hard copy mailed out to you

Feedback and suggestions

We encourage you to explore the system for yourself and provide feedback or any ideas for future developments, along with examples of how you used the data, by emailing us at phcris@flinders.edu.au

Figure 2: View by successes and challenges

Back to features list