Private Hospital Data Bureau and Hospital Casemix Protocal annual reports
The department has identified a problem in the underlying data used to create the Hospital Casemix Protocol (HCP) and Private Hospital Data Bureau (PHDB) annual reports, namely the care type and diagnosis related group (DRG) tables.
An error in the methodology used to derive the three newborn care types (that is, 7.1: full qualified days, 7.2: partially qualified days and 7.3: no qualified days) resulted in separations being incorrectly assigned to care type 7.2 (newborn with partial qualified days) instead of 7.3 (newborn with no qualified days). The underlying data has since been corrected by the department.
This error has resulted in an over-count of newborn separations in the care type tables of the HCP and PHDB annual reports and also, an over-count of separations for DRGs relating specifically to newborns (for example, P68D). The problem affects annual reports prior to 2017–18.
Updated care type tables are already available in the 2018–19 HCP and PHDB annual reports as these include a financial year time-series of statistics using the corrected data. As the DRG table in the respective annual reports only includes data for the most recent financial year, the department has re-created previously published DRG tables for the period 2013–14 to 2016–17, using the corrected data.
The updated HCP Annual Report DRG tablese are available online.
The updated PHDB Annual Report DRG tables are available online.
Any queries regarding these matters should be emailed to casemix.queries@health.gov.au.