Data Collections

About Casemix Data Collections

The Department of Health and Ageing manages a number of hospital related data collections. These contain information about hospital activity in the public and private systems.

National Admitted Patient Care Dataset
Elective Surgery Waiting Times Additions and Removals
Elective Surgery Waiting Times Census
Non-admitted Patient Emergency Care
Outpatient Care Dataset
Public Hospital Establishment Collection
National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC)
The Hospital Casemix Protocol (HCP) Data Collection
Private Hospital Data Bureau (PHDB)

Diagram illustrating the information flows and differences between the four hospital admitted data collections.

National Admitted Patient Care Dataset

• Established: 1991-92.
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: All admitted patients in public and private hospitals.
• Coverage: 100%
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains de-identified patient level hospital separation information including patient demographics, hospital episode and clinical information (ICD-10-AM).

Elective Surgery Waiting Times Additions and Removals

• Established: 2003-04.
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: All admitted patients in public and private hospitals.
• Coverage: 100%
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains de-identified information on patients waiting for elective surgery and patients removed from the waiting list.

Elective Surgery Waiting Times Census

• Established: 2003-04.
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: All patients on elective surgery waiting lists on a census date who are 'ready for care'. Census dates are 30 September, 31 December, 31 March and 30 June.
• Coverage: 100%.
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains de-identified information on patients on elective surgery waiting lists who are yet to be admitted to hospital or removed for another reason.

Non-admitted Patient Emergency Care

• Established: 2003-04
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: Non-admitted patients registered for care in emergency departments in selected public hospitals that are classified as either Peer Group A or B in the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's Australian Hospital Statistics publication from the preceding financial year.
• Coverage: 100%
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains de-identified information on patients presenting to Emergency Departments. The information includes patient demographics, arrival and departure status, triage category and waiting time information.

Outpatient Care Dataset

• Established: 2005-06
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: All public hospitals.
• Coverage: 100%
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains outpatient care information for each financial year including outpatient clinic types, total number of group sessions, and total number of occasions of service.

Public Hospital Establishment Collection

• Established: 2003-04
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: March (preliminary data) and July (State of Our Public Hospitals Report).
• Scope: All public and private hospitals.
• Coverage: 100%
• Source: State/Territory health authorities under the Australian Health Care Agreements.
• Description: Contains public hospital information including expenditure, revenue, staffing, beds and services provided.

National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC)

• Established: 1996-97.
• Collected: By financial year.
• Reported: Annually. Public sector 2006-07 (Round 11) data was released in July 2008.
• Scope: Public and private hospitals, with more than 200 acute separations in the financial year.
• Coverage: 89% of all public hospital separations in 2006-07.

• Source: Jurisdictional coordinators for participating public hospitals and direct from participating private hospitals on a voluntary basis.
• Description: Contains component costs per DRG based on patient-costed and cost-modelled information. (Enables DRG Cost Weights and average costs for DRGs for acute in-patients to be produced).

The Hospital Casemix Protocol (HCP) data collection

• Established: 1995.
• Collected: Monthly.
• Reported: Annually. The 2003-04 data was released in October 2005.
• Scope: All health funds.
• Coverage: 92% of all separations for 2003-04.

• Source: Health funds, as required by legislation.
• Description: Contains de-identified information on insured patients’ hospital separations, including information on patient demographics, clinical information (ICD-10-AM), hospital charges, medical information, medical charges, prosthetic items, prosthetic charges, health fund benefits and consumer out of pocket expenses.

Private Hospital Data Bureau (PHDB)

• Established: 1997-98.
• Collected: Monthly.
• Reported: Annually. The 2003-04 data was made available in January 2005.
• Scope: Private hospitals and day facilities.
• Coverage: The completeness of the dataset has improved each year. Currently (2003-04) the collection holds approximately 86% of private hospital admissions and 74% of day surgery separations.

• Source: Private hospitals and day facilities, as required by legislation.
• Description: Contains de-identified information on private hospital separations, including patient demographics, hospital episode, clinical information (ICD-10-AM) and hospital charges for all patients in private hospitals.