This chapter describes the current state of data collection from private hospitals in Australia, with a focus on those collections which end up in the hands of the Commonwealth agency. It identifies both current collections deemed to be within scope of this Review as well as some potential future collections that have implications for future reporting burden on Australia's private hospitals. Other national collections that were considered to be out of scope are also identified in this chapter.
This chapter also summarises the existing licensing arrangements in States and Territories and associated reporting requirements for private hospitals within those jurisdictions. It includes a section discussing issues raised by the Productivity Commission in its report on public and private hospitals, relating to availability and comparability of data from the two sectors.
The content in this chapter is based on the information obtained from consultations as well as from the document review. In addition, some of the work undertaken for Work Stream 2 has been used.
To identify inefficiencies and potential opportunities for streamlining of data collections from private hospitals, it was necessary to develop a consistent way of collecting and collating the information gathered about two collections within scope. Accordingly, a framework was developed and applied for this purpose. That framework is summarised in Table 2.
Table 2 Information gathering framework.
| Area of interest | Nature of information sought |
|---|---|
| Name of data collection |  |
| Timing of data collection | When did data collections start How often are data submitted |
| Purpose of the collection | Rationale for the collection Who gets the data |
| Scope of data collected | Kind(s) of data collected Data items collected |
| Data submission requirements | Form and format of data submissions Significance of reporting is Duplication of data submitted to other data collections Opportunity for streamlining |
| Data quality | Integrity and quality of the data Missing data Missing submissions |
| Data uses and applications | Existence of value-added products from this data collection that are provided to or available to the private hospital(s) |
| Do the data from this collection get passed on to the Commonwealth | Which agency Process for transmission |