Excludes newborns with no qualified days, and records that do not relate to admitted patients (boarders and posthumous organ procurement).

Limited to public hospitals for 2009–10.

National Hospital Cost Data Collection (NHCDC) AR-DRG 5.2 public sector cost weights for 2008–09 will be applied to AR-DRG 5.2 to calculate casemix-adjusted separations for 2009-10.

Casemix adjustment is based on the Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Group (AR-DRG) assigned to each separation.

Recurrent expenditure is the expenditure measured in Australian dollars incurred by establishments for a financial year.

IFRAC (inpatient fraction) is the ratio of admitted patient costs to total hospital costs—also known as the admitted patient cost proportion.

Casemix refers to the range and types of patients treated by a hospital or health service.

Presented as dollars.

Total reported recurrent expenditure (excluding depreciation) multiplied by the admitted patient cost proportion (IFRAC) reported for each hospital.

Most recent data available for 2012 CRC report: 2009–10.

Data limited to public hospitals for 2009–10.

For detailed definitions see NHPC 2004 National Report on Health Sector Performance Indicators 2003.

The scope of the National Public Hospital Establishment Database is public hospitals, including public acute hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, drug and alcohol hospitals and dental hospitals.

The scope of the National Hospital Morbidity Database (NHMD) is episodes of care for admitted patients in essentially all hospitals in Australia, including public and private acute and psychiatric hospitals, free-standing day hospital facilities, alcohol and drug treatment hospitals and dental hospitals.

Calculation of cost per casemix-adjusted separations for private hospitals would require information on recurrent expenditure and admitted patient cost proportion for individual private hospital establishments, and casemix-adjusted separations for private hospitals. Comparison across public and private sectors would require information on costs excluded from private hospital expenditure that are charged to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS)/Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).