4390.0 - Private Hospitals, Australia, 2006-07 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 29/05/2008   
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EXPLANATORY NOTES


INTRODUCTION

1 This publication contains statistical information for 2006-07 financial year and previous financial years, obtained from an annual census of all licensed private hospitals in Australia. It contains details about the facilities, activities, staffing and finances of all private hospitals, including both private acute and/or psychiatric hospitals and free-standing day hospital facilities.

2 Corresponding statistics for public hospitals are compiled by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in their annual publication, Australian Hospital Statistics.

3 The data presented in this publication are supported by a series of spreadsheets that are available on the ABS website. Any references to tables in the Explanatory Notes also refers to these spreadsheets.

4 A glossary is provided detailing definitions of terminology used within this publication and the associated datacubes.


SCOPE

5 All private acute and psychiatric hospitals licensed by state and territory health authorities and all free-standing day hospital facilities approved by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing for the purpose of health insurance benefits are within the scope of this collection.


COVERAGE

6 Updated lists of private hospitals are received from state, territory and Commonwealth health authorities and every effort is made to include all hospitals in scope.

7 All private hospitals in Australia which operated for all or part of the reference year are included in the collection.


DEFINITIONS

8 The data items and definitions in this collection are based on the National Health Data Dictionary published by the AIHW, with some additional data items requested by private hospital associations and health authorities. Refer to the Glossary for further definitions of the data items used in this publication.


CLASSIFICATIONS

Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC)

9 The ASGC is a hierarchical classification system consisting of six interrelated classification structures. The ASGC provides a common framework of statistical geography and thereby enables the production of statistics which are comparable and can be spatially integrated. These provide Private Hospital statistics with a ‘where’ dimension.

10 For further information about the ASGC refer to cat.no. 1216.0 - Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC), Jul 2007.


International Classification of Diseases

11 The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is the international standard classification for epidemiological purposes and is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of health statistics. The classification is used to classify diseases and causes of disease or injury. The ICD has been revised periodically to incorporate changes in the medical field.

12 Principal diagnosis and procedure for admitted patients are reported in this collection using the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision - Australian Modification, 5th edition (ICD-10-AM).

13 For further information about the ICD refer to WHO | International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

14 For further information about the ICD - 10 AM refer to ICD-10 AM 5th Edition.


Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRG)

15 In Australia, a system of Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRG) is used as a means of classifying patients for Casemix purposes. Casemix refers to the range and types of patients (the mix of cases) treated by a hospital or other health service. Each AR-DRG represents a class of patients with similar clinical conditions requiring similar total hospital resources for their treatment. This provides a way of describing and comparing hospitals and other services for management purposes.

16 This classification is used by most states and territories as a management tool for public hospitals and, to varying degrees, for their funding. The classification is becoming more widely used by private hospitals as a reporting tool. Some contracting between health funds and private hospitals is gradually incorporating charging for patients based on their Casemix classification.

17 The ABS uses this classification to produce tables that provide data on major diagnostic categories.

18 For further information about AR-DRG refer to AR-DRG information on the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) website.


DAY HOSPITALS CATEGORIES

19 Free-standing day hospital facilities are classified by the main income earning activity of the centre. The four main types are general surgery, specialist endoscopy, ophthalmic & plastic/cosmetic. Plastic/cosmetic facilities were collected as a separate category for the first time in 2000-01. Other types of centres, including fertility and sleep disorder clinics, are included in a residual category.


CHAIN VOLUME MEASURES

20 Chain volume measures have been used in this publication to enable analysis of the changes to income and expenditure for private hospitals over time in 'real' terms. It is considered that these measures provide better indicators of movement in real output and expenditures than constant price estimates. Unlike constant price estimates, they take account of changes to price relativities that occur from one year to the next. Chain volume measures are derived by revaluing the original current price series of recurrent expenditure for private hospitals by a specifically compiled measure of price change. The reference period for the chain volume measure is 2006. In this publication the Laspeyres input cost index for hospitals was used. This was specifically designed to measure price change in hospital recurrent expenditures. The data are consistent with the 2006-07 Australian System of National Accounts (cat. no. 5204.0) . Detailed information on chain volume measures and their use in the Australian National Accounts are contained in:



METHODOLOGY

21 Questionnaires are sent each year to all private hospitals in Australia for completion and return to the ABS. For a large proportion of hospitals, data on admitted patients is sent to the ABS by state and territory health authorities on behalf of hospitals.


DATA QUALITY

Missing Data

22 Establishments which provided incomplete data were contacted to obtain the missing details. Hospital staff were asked to provide estimates in cases where records for the data items were not kept. If reasonable estimates could not be provided by the establishment then the data item was either left blank or imputed by ABS staff. Imputation was based on data received in previous years and on the results of the data provided by all responding hospitals. Due to the high response rates (92.3%) imputation rates were very low.


Sources of Error

23 The statistics from this collection may be subject to various sources of error. These may be errors in reporting (e.g. because estimates may have been used in the case of actual data not being available, misunderstanding of questions or unwillingness of respondents to reveal all details) or errors arising during processing (e.g. coding, data recording). Every effort is made to reduce errors in the collection to a minimum by careful design of questionnaires and processing procedures designed to detect errors and enable them to be corrected. These procedures include external coverage checks, clerical and computer editing of input data, error resolution including referral back to the source, and clerical scrutiny of preliminary aggregates.


Hospital Morbidity Data

24 Hospital morbidity data, providing admitted patient's details such as age, principal diagnosis and procedure, are routinely provided by hospitals to state and territory health authorities. Arrangements were made, with consent of the hospitals, for state health authorities to provide the ABS with the relevant morbidity data. Any significant inconsistencies between the data collated by health authorities and by hospitals were followed up and resolved. As a result of this reconciliation of the 2006-07 data, the final total for patient separations was 1.6% higher than that reported by consenting hospitals and 0.3% higher than that compiled from data supplied by state health authorities.


Accounting Practices

25 Differences in accounting policy and practices lead to some inconsistencies in the financial data provided by hospitals. Measurement of expenditure is affected by management policy on such things as depreciation rates, bad debt and goodwill write-off. Further inconsistency occurs in cases where all property and fixed assets accounts are administered by a parent body or religious order headquarters and details are not available for the individual hospitals.


SPECIFIC ISSUES FOR 2006-07 DATA

26 'Other personal care staff' is excluded from the staffing categories collected for the financial year 2006-07, and is therefore not included in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) and Wages and Salary data.

27 The principal diagnosis of admitted patients classification now includes 'Codes for Special Purpose' (ICD-10AM codes U00-U49) which have been included in the totals of all relevant tables.


EFFECTS OF ROUNDING

28 Where figures have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between totals and sums of the component items.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

29 ABS publications draw extensively on information provided by individuals, businesses, governments and other organisations. Their continued cooperation is very much appreciated. Information received by the ABS is treated in strict confidence as required by the Census and Statistics Act 1905.


RELATED PUBLICATIONS

30 Other ABS publications that may be of interest include:
31 The following related publications are issued by other organisations.
32 ABS products and publications are available free of charge from the ABS website <https://www.abs.gov.au>. Click on Statistics to gain access to the full range of ABS statistical and reference information. For details on products scheduled for release in the coming week, click on the Future Releases link on the ABS home page.


ABS DATA AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

33 As well as the statistics included in this and related publications, the ABS may have other relevant data available. Inquiries should be directed to the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or by email to client.services@abs.gov.au.