Generally, the complete hospital name should be used to avoid any ambiguity in identification. This should usually be the same as company registration name. However, in certain circumstances (e.g. internal use), a short name (i.e. an abbreviated name by which the hospital is known) or a locally used name (e.g. where a hospital is known by a name that is different to the company registration name) can be used. At least one hospital name must be recorded for each hospital. The management of mental health services across a jurisdiction or area may result in a number of separate Specialised mental health service organisations reporting various mental health service units from a single hospital entity. In these cases, the Hospital name need not be identical across all entries for the same hospital. A Specialised mental health service organisation may consist of one or more clusters of service units providing services in admitted patient, residential and ambulatory settings. For example, a Specialised mental health service organisation may consist of several hospitals (clusters of admitted patient service units) and/or ambulatory or residential service unit clusters (for example, a cluster of child and adolescent ambulatory service units, and a cluster of aged residential service units). To allow service units to be individually identified, but still also to be identified as part of a hospital (for the admitted patient service setting), or as part of another type of cluster (e.g. other cluster types for ambulatory or residential service setting), a separate reporting level called Hospital for admitted patient service units and Service unit cluster for ambulatory service units and residential service units is necessary. The concept of hospital only applies to admitted service units. The equivalent entity for the grouping of ambulatory service units is cluster. Where applicable, service unit reporting structures should be identical between all mental health collections (e.g., Mental Health National Minimum Data Sets and the Mental Health National Outcomes and Casemix Collection (NOCC)).
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