Episode of admitted patient care—elected accommodation status, code N

Identifying and definitional attributes

• Health, Superseded 23/10/2006

Value domain attributes

Representational attributes

Collection and usage attributes

CODE 1     Public patient:

A person, eligible for Medicare, who, on admission to a recognised hospital or soon after:

• receives a public hospital service free of charge; or
• elects to be a public patient; or
• whose treatment is contracted to a private hospital.

CODE 2     Private patient:

A person who, on admission to a recognised hospital or soon after:

• elects to be a private patient treated by a medical practitioner of his or her choice; or
• elects to occupy a bed in a single room (where such an election is made, the patient is responsible for meeting certain hospital charges as well as the professional charges raised by any treating medical or dental practitioner); or
• a person, eligible for Medicare, who chooses to be admitted to a private hospital (where such a choice is made, the patient is responsible for meeting all hospital charges as well as the professional charges raised by any treating medical or dental practitioner).

Please see the various Commonwealth/State Health Care Agreements for definitions of patient(s) and patient services.

Data element attributes

Collection and usage attributes

At the time of, or as soon as practicable after admission to a public hospital, the patient must elect in writing to be treated as either

• a public patient;
• a private patient in single accommodation; or
• a private patient in shared accommodation.

This item is independent of patient's hospital insurance status. Private includes private-single and private-shared.

Commencing with Version 9 of the Dictionary, four separate data elements Admitted patient hospital stay—elected accommodation status, code N, Person—Medicare eligibility status, code N, Episode of care—treatment funding eligibility status (Department of Veterans' Affairs), code N and Patient—compensable status, code N - are recorded in the Dictionary. This is because each element relates to a separate concept and requires separate information to be reported. These data elements replace the previous data elements Patient accommodation eligibility status and Compensable status.

Relational attributes